Making homemade baby food for your little one is easy with the right tools at hand.
Homemade baby food is less expensive than store-bought, and it’s a lot healthier. You don’t have to worry about weird additives or scary contaminants, and you can introduce your kid to fruits and veggies that you can’t find in premade baby food. With the right tools at hand, it’s really not much harder than the trip to the store to buy jarred baby food!
Related Reading: Homemade Baby Food Safety
My little guy has been eating homemade baby food for almost six months now, and I’ve come to rely on a few important tools and supplies when I’m making his food. If you’re just starting to make your own baby food and aren’t sure how to do it, I hope that this list of resources will help you out!
Homemade Baby Food Tools, Tips and Resources
While your kid is still eating purees, it helps to have a few supplies handy. I’ve learned a few tricks for making things easier on myself since those first months, and I’ve amassed my little homemade baby food tool kit that I use to make all of my son’s purees.
- glass containers – I store my son’s food in freezer safe glass Pyrex bowls and in half-pint mason jars. These are easy to store, you can wash them in the dishwasher, and you don’t have to worry about plastic contaminating the food.
- immersion blender – Save yourself some work! You can puree a lot of your homemade baby food – like beans, sweet potatoes, and other soft veggies – with a hand-held blender instead of an upright. I like this method because I can make the purees in the same container that I will use to store some of them.
- regular blender or food processor – You don’t need a fancy pants blender, but some kind of upright blender comes in handy. For example, the broccoli purees that I’ve been making don’t seem to go so well with the immersion blender.
- rewritable labels – When you’re making your baby food, it can be hard to remember when you made things and what they are. The labels help you know if the food is still good and whether you’re looking at a container of oatmeal and banana or pureed turnips.
That’s really it! Am I missing anything that you guys find helpful when you’re making homemade baby food? I’m always looking to improve my process to save time!
Important life-changing tip: You don’t have to make your homemade baby food on demand. Instead of making one meal at a time, cook up a few big batches of whatever you’re planning to feed your kiddo for the week, puree it, divide it into smaller containers, and stash them in the freezer.
If you’re new to making your baby’s food, it helps to have a guide to what foods are OK to feed when and some recipes to get you started. The site Wholesome Baby Food has been a lifesaver for me. You can find information about different foods for different stages of your baby’s development, recipes, and tips on how to incorporate herbs and spices into your homemade baby food!
I would love to hear from the other parents out there who make homemade baby food! What recipes does your kid love? Any that were flops? Let’s talk homemade baby food in the comments!
Image Credit: Baby Eating photo via Shutterstock
