Weaning recipes

Giving your baby a balanced diet with a variety of weaning recipes

Babies should be eating from four key food groups. Here’s a rough guide to what you should be serving when your baby is 7-9 months old:

• Group 1: Cereals, bread, chapatti, pasta, rice and potatoes - include in all meals
• Group 2: Fruit and vegetables - include in all meals
• Group 3: Meat, fish, poultry, eggs, lentils, beans and nut butters - 1 -2 servings per day
• Group 4: Dairy foods such as yoghurt, fromage frais, milk puddings and cheese - 1-2 servings per day

Vegetarian baby?

If your baby doesn't eat any meat or fish, it’s a good idea to include eggs, pulses, nut butters or tofu in 2 or 3 of their meals every day to ensure they are getting plenty of iron that they need in their diet. Also include dark green vegetables, like spinach and broccoli.

Weaning recipes to introduce new flavours

When your baby is well into weaning and getting used to a few exciting tastes, you can try mixing up your mashes or purées to make them more interesting and nutritious.

Super easy purées

Why not try super easy purées, like these, which you don’t even need to cook!

• Bananas and papaya
• Cucumber and avocado
• Cantaloupe melon and apple

Just make sure you remove any seeds and mash well or purée using a food processor or hand blender.

Weaning recipes to introduce more solids

 Below we’ve included some simple weaning recipes that offer a little bit more than puréed food:

Simple lentil and spinach dahl

Red lentils are ideal because they’re softer than the green ones. You can pop in a hint of spice for your baby, then crank up the temperature with your own portion! Serve this with some rice, cous cous, pasta or mashed potato.

Ingredients

• 2 oz red lentils
• 1 medium onion
• 1 clove garlic
• 2 oz spinach
• Spices to taste – try turmeric and mild chilli powder, or ground cumin and coriander

Method

• Cover the lentils with water and cook them until they are really soft
• Steam the spinach
• Chop up the onion and fry it in sunflower oil with the garlic. Add the coriander and cumin and fry for a minute more, then add the drained lentils and spinach
• You can use a hand blender to purée the dish more, or leave it lumpy, depending on how your baby is going with more textured food 

Simple pasta Bolognese

You can whizz this through a blender when it’s finished, or give it to your baby as it is, depending on their age and how they feel about lumpy food.

Ingredients

• 8 oz minced beef
• Half a small onion
• Half a tin of tomatoes
• Teaspoon of tomato purée
• Half a chopped red pepper
• Half a chopped carrot
• Half a clove of garlic
• Dried pasta cooked in water and drained

Method

• Chop the onion and finely slice the garlic. Fry them in olive oil until they are soft
• Add the pepper and carrot and fry for another five minutes
• Add the tomatoes and tomato purée and mix well
• Add the beef and fry until brown
• Cover and simmer for at least 30 minutes until well cooked
• Serve with cooked pasta