The Art of Making Homemade Baby Food

By: Jennifer De Sousa

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the feeling I had during the first few months of my first son's life. I felt bombarded with having to make decision after decision. Prior to giving birth, I had it all figured out - doesn’t every woman think that with her first baby?

I thought that I was going to be blissfully happy with my perfectly healthy, exclusively breast-fed, cloth-diapered baby. Well, what a shock when the baby came. Instead, I was depressed and had to breast/formula feed my crabby, sick, disposable-diapered baby.

In a normal state of mind I know that these bumps in the road would be dealt with easily, but I was very hormonal and the decisions and the guilt just seemed endless. Cloth vs. disposable diapers, Pampers vs. Huggies, breast vs. bottle, Similac vs. Enflac formula, soother vs. thumb.... it was all very exhausting! I really thought that the worst was over, until, that is, I realized that it was time to start feeding solids.

So then, the list started again...Heinz vs. Gerber, mixing cereal with sterilized water or formula, buying prepared food vs. making my own – you get the drift, I’m sure. But this time my hormones were pretty much in check and I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. How hard could feeding solids be? Only a trip to the grocery store would tell.

After surveying the baby food isle at the grocery store it became very obvious that I only had one option when it came to feeding our baby; I was going to have to make his food myself. The jarred foods on the shelves were outrageously priced ($.69 for a small jar of carrots! Canadian prices), and I was a stay-at-home mom with a limited budget – pretty easy decision on the solid food.

The lack of selection was also somewhat disturbing. I can’t even begin to imagine having to eat strained chicken potpie 3 times in a week! So, then my brain began to start whirling with the possibilities of huge financial savings and a much broader range of food for my baby. I took note of the food combinations that the Gerber and Heinz product lines offered and then went home to figure out how best to tackle the food-making process.

My first attempt at making food was in a blender that I had received as a wedding present a few years ago. The food making session ended quite quickly with the blender in the garbage and me in tears on the kitchen floor (okay, so I was still a little hormonal at that point). The most important lesson I learned about making your own baby food is: Do not use a blender! A blender can’t process the food adequately and your baby will not be impressed with the lumps.

The very next morning I headed out to the mall to hunt down a proper food processor. I ended up buying a mid-sized, multi-function processor that was very reasonably priced. I grabbed it and ran home to my kitchen determined to make my own baby food.

Now, let’s get down to business. You will need the following to begin:

A food processor.
A steamer. A metal basket steamer is inexpensive and works great.
As many ice cube trays as will fit in your freezer.
Decent freezer bags – you don’t want freezer burn!
Foods that your baby is ready to eat.

The basic steps to make most foods are as follows:

1. Prepare the food - wash and peel (if necessary), then cut into chunks.

2. Steam or boil. In the process of boiling you can loose a lot of nutrients, so try to steam all that you can.

3. Keep all remaining water from the steam/boiling process. You will need this water to thin out the processed food.

4. Throw the cooked food into the processor and just let it process until the food reaches a “puréed” state. Add as much of the leftover water from steaming as is needed. Remember that if you have processed the food while it’s still very hot, it will thicken as it cools.

5. Spoon the food into ice cube trays and freeze.

6. Once frozen, remove the cubes from the trays and put into a freezer bag – label and return to freezer.

The “puréed” stage of baby food is very easy. You simply throw chunks of food into the processor and just let it process while you tend to other things. It’s the “strained” stage that becomes a little trickier as food goes from “strained” to “puréed” very quickly. Hint: do not leave your “strained” foods to process while you throw another load of laundry into the washing machine!

The first few weeks of making baby food are quite simple. Your baby is just starting out and really doesn’t need a huge quantity or selection of food. But once your baby realizes how yummy this food is he’ll work up an appetite and then you’re going to have to mass-produce! I’ve found that it’s best to shop for everything you need and then choose a day or two for cooking and freezing.

Having limited space in your freezer for ice cube trays doesn’t mean that you can’t make more than one kind of food in a morning/afternoon. I cook, steam, boil and process 5-6 different foods in one morning. I freeze the first processed food and then store the next processed foods in Tupperware containers in the fridge until the ice cube trays are available again. This way, I’m able to cook enough food for several weeks in about 2 days.

There are definite timesaving points that I have learned through the process of making baby food for my own two children. Sure, you can make absolutely everything from scratch, but I highly doubt that you’ll last long in this endeavor, as it is extremely time consuming. The key to surviving making your own baby food (along with caring for your kids, house, husband and job – if you’re lucky enough to be employed outside of the home!), is to include some ready-made foods such as…

Bag of peeled baby carrots, just needs to be washed and steamed.
Quick-frozen peas/corn/squash/beans, they’re ready to be steamed.
Large jar of unsweetened applesauce, needs only to be frozen.
Large can of good-quality peaches and pears, needs to be thoroughly rinsed in cold water to remove the syrup, then processed.
Buy a bag of plump prunes or apricots, cut up, process and add water.

Other tips:

Ø When making pasta, be sure to use a pasta that absorbs water really well (macaroni is great), and add lots of extra water to the pot when cooking it. When processing into baby food add lots of water as it thickens considerably when it cools.

Ø Use long-grain rice and again, add lots of extra water.

Ø You can process bananas, just be sure to add about ¼ tsp. of lemon juice to every 2-3 bananas very quickly or they will turn a nasty brown. I prefer to cut a piece off a banana and mash it with a fork so that it’s fresh right when my baby wants it.

Ø Most butchers sell every kind of meat in “ground-up” form. Simply cook it (no oil is necessary), and process. Quite a bit of water is necessary to “hold” the meat together.

Ø Ham can be bought in the form of “ham steaks,” cooked, cut up and processed.

Ø You can process leftover soups, stews, casseroles and pasta meals (lasagna is good too), from your own family dinners. Make sure they aren’t loaded with salt and spices though.

The great thing about making your own baby food is that the combinations are endless! Once your baby is ready to start combining foods then the fun begins. The same foods that I would serve my family, I combine for my baby. A cube of meat, 2 different veggie cubes and 1 cube of either rice/pasta or potato is a great combination; just vary the number of cubes according to how hungry your baby is.

I put the dish with 4 frozen cubes into the microwave on high for about 1 minute and 30 seconds, stir, check temperature and serve. When visiting friends for a meal I put 4 frozen cubes into a “snack size” Tupperware container, another 2 frozen fruit cubes into another Tupperware, pack a small yogurt and off we go! If you’re going out to a restaurant you can either have them microwave the dish for you (which I’ve done many times – but watch that they don’t cook it), or you can preheat the food at home and just keep it warm in a mini-thermos.

Not long ago, I had to pack enough meals for my baby for 4 days when my parents were watching the kids at their house. It was very easy. I stood in front of my huge stash of baby food in the freezer with a handful of small plastic sandwich bags and started putting 4 cubes into each bag. I then threw all the bags into a small cooler with an ice pack and drove it up to my mom’s house with the kids and all their things.

I know it seems like a lot of work to make homemade baby food, but if you slowly make the texture of the food a little more course each time you make a batch, your baby will be eating “table food” before you know it. My oldest child started eating all table food (no processing) before his first birthday and my new baby, thankfully, seems to be on the same schedule. I can’t wait until I can put the food processor away for good!

I’ve given you the basics and a few tricks, and I’m sure you’ll come up with a few of your own along the way – be sure to pass them on to your women friends. Happy cooking to you, and happy eating to your baby!

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