Becky's Best Bites

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Homemade Broccoli Baby Food

Baby/Toddler, Recipes

Homemade Broccoli Baby Food by Becky's Best Bites

I’m back with my series on Homemade Baby Food 🙂 I hope that y’all are enjoying it as much as I am!! Today I’m going to share Homemade Broccoli Baby Food. It is quick, easy and so good for baby. It can be made in just a few simple steps and as with all my homemade baby food recipes, save you tons of money verses store-bought!!

homemade baby food broccoli recipe

I picked up this huge 32 oz bag of fresh broccoli florets from Sam’s Club for around $4-5. That is a heck of deal if you ask me and ended up a TON of broccoli for my nephew, Z.  For this post, I am not going to go through the whole set-up again as I did in my post for Homemade Spinach Baby Food. You can just click over to that link for all the details. I will just refresh your memory by saying that you will need a large pot, silicone steamer basket, a food processor, lots of ice-cube trays, a vacuum sealer and portion pouch bags.

Like with all my baby food recipes, I found this one on Pinterest from blog with a very cute name, Crackers & Carrots. It is pretty much the same process for all of the baby food, but I wanted to be sure. There are some fruits that you can make baby food out of that don’t require any cooking.  Some of those include bananas (which you can check out this post for all the details on making banana baby food), avocados, mangos and peaches. I am sure there are others, but those are the one that I have made for my little Z man.

steaming the broccoli for the homemade baby food recipes

Steam the broccoli florets until they are nice and tender. This takes anywhere from 10-15 minutes depending on how big your florets are. Once tender, transfer the cooked broccoli to your food process and puree. You will need some of the cooking water to get the broccoli puree to the consistency of baby food.  You want to be able to spoon it and not have big chunks that your baby could choke on, especially when he/she is first starting out on baby food. Although broccoli isn’t a first food to feed to your baby. It is suggested that you start broccoli at 8 to 10 months. My sister started Z on it at 8 months with her pediatrician approval, of course.

steamed broccoli goes into the food processor for the homemade baby food recipes

Here is the consistency that you will want for your homemade broccoli baby food. I found that I had to add more of the cooking water to broccoli than to just about any of the other baby foods.

As with the spinach baby food, you will want to spoon the broccoli puree into ice-cube trays and then freeze. Once frozen solid, pop the broccoli cubes out of the trays and portion into bags, label and vacuum seal. You homemade broccoli baby food will be perfectly portioned into one ounce unit and will stay good in the freezer for up to 3 months. Take out what you need to feed your baby a few hours ahead of feeding time, let it thaw, stir and it’s ready to eat.

My sister likes to make combinations for lil Z (once he has tried each food independently and not had any sort of reaction). For example, she might make a combo of broccoli with apple or spinach with pears. She has found that pairing a sweet fruit with the veggies works well 🙂 What combinations work best for your baby?

Here is a printable version of the Homemade Broccoli Baby Food Recipe:

Homemade Broccoli Baby Food
 
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Prep time
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Total time
 
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Serves: 32
Ingredients
  • 32 oz. organic broccoli florets
Instructions
  1. Put about an inch or so of water in a large stock pot. Add a steamer basket to the pot, making sure that there is no water visible in the basket.
  2. Bring the water to a boil over high heat.
  3. Once the water is rapidly boiling, fill the steamer basket with broccoli and cover the pot.
  4. Steam the spinach for 10-15 minutes or until the broccoli is very tender and a dark green color.
  5. Remove the cooked broccoli and transfer to the food processor.
  6. Process the cooked broccoli until it creates a puree, adding some of the cooking water to thin out to a puree consistency.
  7. Use a spoon to fill up the ice-cube trays with the broccoli puree.
  8. Place trays of baby food in the freezer and freeze until solid, usually over night or up to 24 hours.
  9. Once frozen, pop the cubes of broccoli baby food out of the trays and place into either vacuum sealer pouches or freezer storage bags.
  10. Either vacuum seal the pouches or try to squeeze out as much air as possible out the freezer storage bags.
  11. Place back in the freezer until needed.
  12. Thaw as needed. Each cube is 1 ounce of baby food.
  13. Baby food will last in the freezer for up to 3 months.

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