Making your own baby food is a great way to save money and reduce waste (just like using Encore Baby Registry!) when your baby starts eating solid foods.

Even better, it is easily done, all with gear you already have in your kitchen, so you can also SKIP spending $60-$200 on one of these “all-in-one” baby food making machines.  And even BYPASS the smaller accessories like these baby food hand mills and mashers.

Now that we’ve established what you don’t need, lets take a look at the things you already have in your kitchen, just waiting to help you make your first batch of homemade baby food.  Many foods need to be cooked to make them soft enough for baby, so you’ll start with:

a steamer insert and a pot

or

a freestanding food steamer (if you plan to regularly steam things for the whole family)

Some foods, like potatoes and beets, can be baked in the oven.

Next comes pureeing, grinding or mashing the steamed foods into baby food puree.  You likely have a variety of options in your kitchen for this step:

Fork

Potato masher

Ricer

Food mill

Food Processor*

Hand Blender

Blender**

*You may notice we linked to a Cuisinart 14 cup food processor that’s a little over $200.  Some day we’ll write a whole blog post about how we jumped from a $35 Hamilton Beach food processor that we were happy with to the $200+ most expensive Cuisinart model and have no regrets (accept that we didn’t make the move sooner)!

**And then we’ll write another post about upgrading to a “renewed”/refurbished Vitamix blender, also with no regrets despite the cost compared to our original blender.  Buy from a trusted brand, with their warranty, while saving money and lowering your environmental footprint!  Ours is still running strong after 10 years of almost daily use!

After your baby food is pureed, storage is the next step.  Standard ice-cube trays are the perfect size for baby food portioning and freezing.  If you don’t already have ice-cube trays on hand, there are plenty of options in different materials (plastic, silicone, stainless steel) and sizes, with lids or without.  As baby’s appetite gets a bit bigger, you can mix and match with combinations like 1 cube pureed beets + 1 cube pureed watermelon, 1 cube broccoli + 1 cube sweet potatoes, and so on.

The second half of storing frees up your ice-cube trays by transferring your frozen baby food cubes into jars.  Wash and save glass jars from foods like spaghetti sauce, apple sauce, peanut butter, pickles, and so on for great, free freezer storage.  Label each jar with the baby food puree cube flavor that is in it and the date created (masking tape makes for incredibly cheap and easy labels)*:

Whenever it’s time to feed your baby, just grab a jar or two from the freezer, select some of your homemade puree cubes and defrost in the microwave, in the toaster oven, or on the stove.  If you keep a few different flavors on hand, you can mix and match for a wide variety of flavor combinations.

*Tip: When transferring your frozen baby food puree cubes into the glass jars, make sure the jars are room temperature or lower–you could even briefly stick them in the refrigerator to cool them down before filling.  Placing warm or hot glass in a cold freezer can crack it and placing frozen baby food puree cubes in a warm jar can soften the cubes just enough to make them all stick together, making it hard to get them out later.

All that being said, while baby food can likely be made with things you’ve already got in your kitchen, some families will find that an all-in-one baby food maker still makes sense for their needs.  Thanks to secondhand shopping and hand-me-down giving and sharing, there’s no shame in getting one more kitchen/baby gadget with short lived use (but sellable or hand-downable when you’re done with it)!

Have you made your own baby food?  What were your baby’s favorite flavors or flavor combinations?

Encore Baby Registry is an affiliate of Amazon and this blog post includes affiliate links.