If your baby is six months old (or older), you may be thinking that it’s time to start playing with solid foods, but where do you start?
While there are many healthy pre-made options available at your local grocer (organic included), homemade baby food is the way to go if you want to know exactly what is going into your baby’s mouth. Unfortunately for many new parents, the idea of making your own baby food is often just too daunting.
With that in mind, today we’re introducing an easier way to make your own baby food with the Baby Brezza Glass One Step Baby Food Maker. Not only does this baby food maker bring healthy homemade pureed food to your baby’s mouth in minutes, but its one-of-a-kind, patented features take all the hassle out of creating delicious, wholesome purees for your child by automatically blending food after steaming. It’s so easy, we’re wondering why we ever considered spending a dime on jarred baby food.
The Advantages of Homemade
Did you know that canned baby food is cooked at extremely high temperatures to kill bacteria for a longer shelf life? While great for long-term storage, this method strips many of the food’s vitamins, nutrients and taste away. Why rush to introduce solids to your precious baby if you’re just going to give him junk?
Therefore, by making your own baby food, you’ll:
- Know exactly what you’re feeding your baby.
- Save money, as buying pre-made tends to be more expensive over time, while making your own food can create multiple servings for your baby.
- Be able to choose your own fruits, vegetables and other foods for purees, instead of relying on a limited selection of flavors.
- Find that the transition to table food is relatively easy as your baby is already used to eating the same food as the rest of the family.
The Disadvantages of Homemade
We can all agree that making your own baby food has incredible advantages, but to be fair, we thought we’d address some of the disadvantages.
- Time: It does take time to peel, cut, boil/steam and blend your own purees… if you don’t own a baby food maker that does it all for you. Most parents who attempt to make their own food will quit after spending weekend after weekend making food that their baby just spits on the floor.
- Convenience: We can’t deny the ease of prepackaged baby food. Especially for travel, what could be easier than opening a container and feeding your baby?
- Storage: Store-bought baby food has a longer shelf life and doesn’t require any sort of refrigeration (until it’s opened). Homemade baby food can spoil faster and typically requires some level of refrigeration, which may take up valuable real estate in your fridge or freezer if you make a lot at one time.
To be honest, many of us were turned off to making our own baby food for the same reasons we listed above. When you’re already functioning on so little sleep while taking care of a cute, but very demanding crawling baby, all the work involved in making your own purees is just enough to cause anyone to throw in the towel.
Therefore, when we came across Baby Brezza’s Glass One-Step Baby Food Maker, we almost rolled our eyes until we decided to give this homemade baby food thing another try. And boy, are we glad we did! If we had only known that making baby food could be this easy, we never would have given up the first time around.
Features to Love
- Unlike anything else on the market. Offers three settings with its one-of-a-kind patented function to steam and automatically blend food together in one bowl quickly with a single press of a button.
- Eco-friendly. New glass bowl minimizes food contact with plastics providing a healthy option to cook wholesome, homemade food.
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Affordable – Retails for $159.99 at Buy Buy Baby.
- The large capacity glass bowl minimizes food contact with plastic while cooking, and can make up to 4 cups of food at one time.
- Ability to steam and blend in the same bowl. There’s no need to transfer food to another container in the middle of your cooking process.
- Easy cleaning: the steam tank can be opened completely for easy filling and cleaning. Meanwhile, the bowl and blade are dishwasher safe.
- 3 settings allow you to have as much control as you want: steam only, blend only, or automatically blend after steaming.
- Set includes the baby food maker with glass bowl and removable water tank, spatula, recipe booklet and instruction manual.
Making Baby Food with Baby Brezza
Making baby food with Baby Brezza’s Glass One Step Baby Food Maker can be done in 5 super easy steps (most of which is prep).
1. Prepare fruits and vegetables.
Of course, it goes without saying to wash and rinse your hands, and baby food maker before you get started. Then, wash, peel, core (if necessary) and cut fruits and vegetables into small chunks.
Cut ingredients to approximately 1/4″ – 1/2″ pieces before placing in the bowl. Smaller pieces of food steam and blend more thoroughly, ensuring proper food texture for your baby to easily swallow and digest.
2. Place chunks into Baby Brezza.
The glass bowl of the Baby Brezza can hold up to four cups of raw ingredients. However, be careful not to overfill. The machine works best when filled just under the maximum capacity.
Also, be sure that there is enough water in the water tank before setting the machine to steam. If the water tank runs dry, the Baby Brezza will beep rapidly 5 times to let you know it needs to be refilled. For best results, use distilled water to prevent scaling in the water tank.
All purees can be mixed with additional water, breast milk or formula to create a thinner consistency.
3. Steam and Blend.
Set the steam and blend function to the appropriate cooking time and press the “start” button. Make note of foods that might require some liquid to be added or removed before blending.
For example, we decided to give apples and sweet potatoes a try. Here is what Baby Brezza suggests in terms of the recommended cooking guidelines for basic foods:
However, be sure that you pay particular attention to Baby Brezza’s special cooking notes that apply to certain fruit and vegetables. In this case, apples have high water content. Therefore, you may want to drain some of the water out of the container after steaming, prior to blending. Meanwhile, sweet potato purees tend to be very thick, so they recommend adding 1/2 – 3/4 cup of water to the bowl before blending for best results.
Once you get the hang of basic purees, you’ll have enough confidence to move onto some of Baby Brezza’s other recipes, including meats and combinations.
4. Cool and Store.
When finished steaming and blending, make sure the baby food cools down to a temperature appropriate for your child before feeding. Also, check puree consistency to make sure that the recipe is as smooth or chunky as you desired. If necessary, you can always press and hold the “blend” to puree for additional time.
From there, grab an ice tray (or baby food storage container) and scoop/pour the puree into the bins so that you can store your freshly made baby food in the refrigerator or freezer for later use.
5. Enjoy!
See how easy that was? And by making your own food, you can also experiment with seasoning and spices to suit your baby’s growing taste buds.
Just remember that “food before one is just for fun” (mostly), so don’t stress too much if at first taste your baby hasn’t totally bought into your homemade purees.
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Glass One Step Baby Food Maker
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Photo Credits: Ashley Sisk and Frédérique Voisin-Demery
