Homemade Baby Food Recipe #1

So we just finished watching Julie & Julia, and it made me realize that I set up this blog and have completely neglected it! (Fab movie, btw. My mom hormones kept me squeezing back tears the whole time, and if my honey wasn't sitting next to me I would have been bawling through half of it. What is it about becoming a mom that just makes you well up at the tiniest little sentimental things anyway? It's kind of annoying and NOT very punk rock...)

I wonder if anyone did my baby food taste test? Probably not, as I know it can take quite a while to get a following for these blog things (and as this is only my second post in two weeks, I am not giving people much to follow!). But if you did do it, please comment below!

So my first of hopefully many homemade baby food recipes is meat purée. This is intended for babies 6 months to about a year. (Although EV, at almost 1 year old, has aged out of it for the most part--for the past two months, she has preferred food she can pick up and eat herself. However, since we still have a bunch of purée in the freezer, we are finishing it up; she does still chow down on it, as she did this evening mixed with leftover scalloped sweet potatoes from last night.)

One of the new thoughts on feeding babies solid food (especially breastfed babies who are not getting the overkill of iron in formula) involves starting meat as one of the earliest foods around 6 months. I think chicken purée was EV's third or fourth food (after bananas, sweet potatoes, and maybe peas...).

What you will need:

A saucepan
A wooden spoon
A food processor
An ice cube tray or two
A tablespoon-sized spoon
Some water
1 lb of ground meat* (defrosted if frozen)

I've done this with beef, turkey, lamb, and chicken, but I don't see why pork, duck, venison, or whatever mammal or bird wouldn't work. Lamb is a bit on the fatty side (unless you grind your own--see note at the bottom), and your baby will smell like lamb fat for the rest of the day (a divine smell to me, but not so much for my dear husband).

Put the meat in the saucepan with just enough water to cover.

Bring to a boil, and the second it starts to boil, turn down to a bare simmer (so the bubbles just gently and slowly break as they reach the surface).** DO NOT let it boil hard, or the purée will be unpalatable. This is why most meat baby food tastes like chalk!

Let it simmer for about 5-8 minutes or so, stirring frequently and breaking/chopping up the chunks with the wooden spoon into individual grains of ground meat (as much as is possible--don't obsess about this step, it will be puréed after all...).

Let cool in the pan slightly (about 15-20 minutes--just so it's not steaming hot), then spoon the meat into the bowl of your food processor and pour in a small amount of the broth (about a 1/2 cup to start). Pulse the food processor in short, 15-second-or-so blasts until you have a soupy mush. Add a bit more broth if it is getting too thick. You want it to be a little bit on the soupy side, as this allows you to microwave it more easily without it drying out.

The paste will separate a bit from the broth. Using the tablespoon-sized spoon, ladle the thicker bottom paste evenly into the ice cube trays and top with the more brothy liquid.

1 lb of meat should fit nicely in a standard ice cube tray with maybe one or two servings left over for immediate or next-day use (these can be stored in the fridge, unfrozen).

Then freeze the ice-cube tray, and once frozen, pop the cubes out into a ziploc or tupperware for longer storage.

Variation: Once your child gets a little older and can handle chunkier food, sear the ground meat first in a dry saucepan until browned all over (this adds a depth of flavor, but it also prevents a very smooth purée). Then add the water and follow the above instructions. You do not need to purée the meat as finely once your child can handle some chewing (for us this was around 8 months).

To use: put a cube in a bowl and nuke for anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute depending on your microwave. You just want to barely defrost the cube, so that you can mush it up with a spoon. Stir it around the bowl to make sure you get rid of any hot spots. Add a little bit of some sort of fruit or veggie purée (if you're doing these from frozen cubes you can defrost them together, but it takes a little bit longer), test to make sure it's all cool enough, and feed!

[FYI--I know they say you're not supposed to nuke things for babies because they heat unevenly. I hope you are not enough of a dumb-ass to just feed this straight to your baby without letting it cool down properly, but if you are, you can also just leave a cube or two to defrost in the fridge before you go to bed at night, and it will be defrosted by the am.]

Texture-wise, on its own, the meat purée will still be a bit chalky. It is unavoidable as far as I can tell--kind of like how you can get a broken emulsion in sausage or paté making (if you have tricks for avoiding this, please comment below!). But once the purée is combined with a bit of fruit or veggie, it's fabulous. I have taste-tested many varieties myself (all the varieties I've fed EV--if I won't eat it, I won't make her eat it!). I promise some recipes for veggie purées later (I have to admit, I do buy applesauce--regular grown-up applesauce--and baby pears, as I just don't have time to make fruit purées and those actually taste good straight out of the jar.)


*I would say preferably organic, as big ag puts all sorts of nasty things in animals and their meat (e.g. see this or this). If you're really DIY, as I am, you will grind your own, but this latter step is not necessary. For pre-ground meat, I have to put a plug in here for the Organic Prairie 1 lb frozen chubs! (Hopefully this plug will pull up ads for them in the sidebar??? I love this company and their companion Organic Valley label.) Defrost the chubs in the fridge overnight, or put in a ziploc and defrost in a water bath--note that the chub packaging is NOT water-tight, hence the ziploc...

**If you are unfortunate enough to have an electric stove, have two burners going--one on high to bring the pot to a boil, and another on low, so you can stop the boil quickly and switch to a simmer.