Easily Digestible Bean Soups and Hodgepodge Recipe for Infants

Infants are highly prone to stomach disorders due to their decreased sensitivity to new food ingredients and they are usually dependent on mother’s breast feed since their birth. So whenever you will start a new food, some babies will throw up the food or later on will have problem with constipation or diarrhea. Due to these reasons, it is highly recommended to start feeding your baby one by one, i.e., liquids, semi liquids, and then solids. You cannot give your baby complete food what you are eating instantly as the baby will not digest it but you can start with some soups made out of pulses for your baby.

Today I will share my knowledge with all of you regarding pigeon pea or tur dal and hodgepodge recipe or khichdi which we started giving to our baby, Shronika, when she was just 6 months old. Now read on the preparation of both and my advice:

How to Prepare Pigeon Pea Soup?

Pressure cook pigeon pea (tur dal) along with double the quantity of water up to 4 whistles .Once the cooker becomes reasonably cold enough to open, remove the dal water from above, don’t stir the dal (pulses) .Now collect the dal water and heat it once again adding a pinch of salt and a dash of astefotida (hing). By adding hing, the baby does not gets stomach disorders. Now once boiled, let it become luke warm and feed that to your baby with a spoon. You can also make split bean recipe (moong dal) in same style.

For giving rice, you can give the baby only plain rice too, but make sure the rice is nicely cooked and is soft on mashing. After 10 or 11 months or so, you may start giving dal and rice together. You can also give bits of chapatti or roti mashed nicely in you hand. Take very minute bits of chapatti and mash it between your thumb and finger and feed the baby. Your baby will develop a taste soon. When you start giving roti or case any new food, you should give it during the daytime as the food gets easily digested and in case of any stomach disorders, they will also be get noticed by evening only.

How to Prepare Hodgepodge Recipe?

You can also give khichdi or hodgepodge dish to you baby from 6 months onwards but it should be a very light one. My baby’s pediatrician advised me for it. Now here is the recipe:

1. Soak three spoons of rice and one spoon of splint bean or pigeon pea or lentil for 1 hour or so.
2. Now add a pinch of salt, astefotida (hing), turmeric (haldi) and and pressure cook it 3 whistles and then put it on sim for 5 minutes.
3. Now switch off the gas and open and stir it to cool.
4. Add half a spoon of ghee. Your recipe is ready.
5. You may grind it for initial few days and later on mash it with spoon and feed your baby.
6. And if you want to give pulses or dals only, then also you can follow the same method and remove rice from the recipe.

Important Tip: Water content in the khichdi or hodgepodge recipe should be three times the rice and dal.

So above were two important easily digestible recipes for infants and also for babies who suffer from colicky pains or stomach disorders. According to natural medicine, astefotida (hing) and turmeric (haldi) have excellent therapeutic and medicinal properties and are really beneficial in treatment of common problems of infants. Also, pulses like chicken pa, split beans, and lentils are high in protein and nutritional value and are easily digestible.