Easy Homemade Recipes for Weaning 4 to 6 Month Old Babies

Weaning a baby from liquids to solids can seem like a daunting task to a new parent. While convenient, store brought jars of baby food can prove to be expensive. Particularly in the early stages of weaning when your baby may only take a few spoons of food, and an opened jar only keeps for 24 hours in the fridge.

By following some simple recipes, you can make a batch of meals for your little one at the beginning of the week and freeze them for use throughout the week. These meals use fresh ingredients you are likely to buy with your weekly grocery shop, which means they are inexpensive to make.

You also have the added bonus of knowing exactly what your child is eating. So if you are worried about additives or want your family to eat organically; then cooking your own baby meals is the way to go.

• At 4-6 months, weaning is all about introducing new tastes to your child. So food should be blended well with no lumps
• Start with simple tastes, avoid strong tasting foods such as onion to begin with and gradually introduce it as they gain confidence eating.
• Do not add sugar, salt or pepper, at this stage let your child become accustomed to the natural taste of different fruit and vegetables
• Stay aware of any foods you should avoid introducing to your child at such a young age (e.g. nuts, unpasteurised dairy, honey and undercooked eggs). You can find out more about what foods to avoid by contacting your midwife, G.P. or Health Practitioner.
• Remember that some foods, particularly green vegetables can have a bitter taste to babies.
• If your baby refuses to eat a particular food, don't give up. Keep introducing the food to them (along with other things they do like)

• Steamer (electric or the saucepan type)
• Blender
• Mini portion tupperware pots, or ice cube trays that are reserved specifically for baby food

When you have finished cooking and blending these meals, let them cool, then divide them into individual portion tupperware pots, or into ice cube trays and freeze.

Remove a pot, or as many ice cubes as needed and reheat in the microwave (a minute is usually enough), or reheat in a saucepan on the hob. Make sure food is thoroughly reheated, and allow to cool before giving to your baby.

• 1/4 of a whole cauliflower
• 3 parsnips

1. Wash vegetables
2. Peel and cut parsnips into small chunks
3. Cut cauliflower into small florets
4. Place in steamer and steam until soft
5. Blend until smooth using some boiled water or a little water from the steamer

• 3 carrots
• 2 sweet potatoes

1. Wash and peel vegetables
2. Dice carrots and sweet potatoes into small chunks
3. Steam for approx 15 mins (until soft)
4. Blend until smooth with a little boiled water or some water from the steamer

As with the dinners, the puddings can be frozen into individual portions and used as needed.

These puddings can be served warm or cold.

To serve cold, leave your required number of portions to defrost at room temperature for a few hours before serving, or put in the microwave on the defrost setting for a minute or two

To serve hot, reheat the portion/s thoroughly either in the microwave or in a saucepan and allow to cool.

For an alternative serving method, add a defrosted or heated portion to some made up baby rice (found in the baby aisle, and made with your babies usual milk).

Alternatively, you can add a mashed up banana to your defrosted portions. But do not add banana prior to freezing as banana doesn't freeze well.

• 8 fresh strawberries

1. Wash strawberries, and remove stalks
2. Chop strawberries into quarters
3. Blend to smooth puree

• 2 fresh apples
• 2 fresh pears
• tiny pinch of ground cinnamon

1. Wash fruit, peel, core and slice
2. Put in a saucepan and cover with water
3. Add a tiny pinch of cinnamon
4. Boil until soft, approx 15 mins
5. Strain, but keep some of the water
6. Blend until smooth using the reserved water from the pan