We make our own baby food for Gabriel. It’s cheaper than buying jarred, I get to control what he eats, he gets to try more foods with diverse flavors, and also it’s just sorta fun! It is also a lot easier than you’d think!
Everyone always talks about the book Super Baby Food, and I’m no exception. It is a really fantastic resource for baby and toddler friendly recipes and is incredibly informative about food. It is a little hardcore (she encourages you to make your own yogurt, which sounds awesome, but also a little gross given that yogurt is basically spoiled milk), but a really great place to start.
Anyway, I like to use him as an excuse to go to the farmer’s market every week. I have to get him the freshest organic produce, right? And while I’m there, I might as well pick up some honey and cheese too! When I get home, I try to get to work as soon as I can.
1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Chop and clean vegetables (in the image above, I used sweet potato and green beans).
3. Lay out on a baking pan and lightly drizzle with olive oil.
4. Bake for 15-20 minutes depending on the vegetable. I like to bake the vegetables rather than steam or boil them because it preserves more of the nutrients also you can cook it in larger quantities. Different vegetables cook faster than others, so check often.
5. Remove from the oven once they’re soft and leave them out to cool.
6. Once they’ve cooled, place them in a blender and blend until you’ve got a smooth puree. We’ve got a vitamix and I’m pretty sure we will never look back. You might have to add small quantities of water at this stage to help it blend. You can also add homemade vegetable stock if you’ve got it (store bought has too much salt for little baby kidneys).
7. Spoon the mixture into ice cube trays. You don’t need fancy baby freezing containers. Just plain old ice cube trays work just fine. Make sure they’re BPA free and can be sealed and protected from freezer flavors. We have this one and it works perfectly!
8. Freeze the cubes and once they’re frozen, pop them out and transfer to freezer lock zip locks, label and store!
At the end of every day, I put aside a few cubes in the fridge to defrost overnight for Gabriel to eat. He is now eating about 3-4 cubes per meal, roughly equivalent to 3-4 tablespoons.
All I end up having to do is pull out the cubes and add the smallest amount of hot water just to mash it up and then I serve it, but you can always use a microwave too!
Thanks for sharing this! How long do the frozen cubes last? Love this blog, btw
oh never saw this comment! thanks for loving us! Different foods last for different times in the freezer. Vegetables can go for longer than meat, but generally speaking, I didn’t let anything sit in the freezer for more than 2 months.
Depends on how cold your freezer is. The geraenl rule of thumb for most home freezers is to keep food in the freezer no longer than 3 months. For a deep freezer, frozen food can last a year to several years.Most freezers attached to home refrigerators maintain a temp of 0 F to 20 F. A deep freezer can get down to -20 F or lower.Just so you know, frozen vegetables are not a hazardous food product like meat. Meat can spoil in the freeze; this is known as freezer burn. The 3 month rule just means that the vegetables MAY not taste as good as they did when you first bought them. They’ll be fine and they will be perfectly safe to eat many months from now.