Baby Food Puree

baby food puree, freezing tips, batch cooking, recipes

Before having a baby, I could not imagine having the time to make homemade baby food! However when the time came to give Peanut his first taste of food, I wanted to be the one to cook it for him! So started my mission to figure out to how to time and cost effectively make my own baby food.

I’ll list out what purees we gave Peanut at each month, link the recipe, and talk about how I made them in batches to freeze. I picked out recipes that used similar ingredients to maximize on the produce I bought. *I did not add the spices suggested in the purees, just a personal preference.

I named the stages of purees I was making to help decide and differentiate with how I would progress through introducing them to Peanut.

  • simple purees (one ingredient)
  • combination purees (two- three ingredients ingredients)
  • complex purees (multiple ingredients with a texture)

5 Months

FIRST COOKING BATCH– bought big bags of these foods and made the purees. I froze them in mason jars. (I love the plastic lids on those!) I used these stickers to write the type of puree on the lids.

We introduced purees in the below order, waiting 4 days in between to introduce the next food in case of allergies. We started with simple purees of veggies! Peanut only had one puree a day at this point.

Simple Purees

  • Butternut Squash
  • Carrots
  • String Beans
  • Apples
  • Pears

6 Months

SECOND COOKING BATCH (I doubled the recipes)

We gave Peanut two puree meals a day (usually one fruit and one veggie) and introduced one finger food meal a day. This month I did started with simple purees and then started to introduce combination puree. I would usually do one of each a day!

Simple Purees

  • COPY LAST MONTH
  • *add new ones

Combination Purees

7 Months

Peanut’s hunger for food really seemed to increase this month! We gave him two purees and then baby rice or oatmeal for dinner (with peanut butter or banana puree). We also offered Peanut finger food at all three meals by the end of 7 months.

Simple Purees

Continued to use stock in freezer!

Combination Purees

8 Months

THIRD COOKING BATCH

I made a double or triple batch of these purees and it lasted us through 10 months when we completely phased out giving purees with meals. During this month, Peanut was eating much bigger meals with multiple finger foods each time. We also added more protein and grains in his finger foods this month.

Combination Purees

Complex Purees

These complex purees do not have a smooth texture and it was perfect for Peanut at this point to be exposed to this!

9 Months

This month we started phasing out purees and increased the finger food. The purees in the freezer were perfect for if Peanut still seemed hungry after a meal we would warm it up quickly for him!

At the beginning of 10 months we completely phased out giving Peanut puree with his meals because he was eating so much finger food! (I was planning on making another batch soon, but he didn’t need it!)

I was SO overwhelmed at the idea and choices when it came to making my own purees. I hope that this helps you in planning!

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Want to read more about how we introduced finger foods?

baby food puree, freezing tips, batch cooking, recipes

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