Your baby is 6 months? Yay! A milestone for your little one - starting solid food. As mentioned in our previous post, there are a few weaning stages. At 6 months, to avoid complications such as allergies and even choking, you should introduce one food at a time. Use the four-day wait rule to identify any allergies. Purees are the best at this time.
Then, when your baby has reached 7 months old, you can start to combine ingredients and even introduce meat.
This is the period for babies to be introduced to a variety of food, so you should also get creative with your recipes. Even grown-ups will get bored eating the same food every day, right? So here we are sharing a few recipes to help you get started.
1. Fruit and vegetable purees.
This is a traditional starter! Your baby can try various yummy fruits and vegetables as their first food. It’s very simple, too. Some fruits don’t need any cooking, while some vegetables only need steaming to make them soft. You can then either mash them or blend them with water or milk. Examples of fruits and vegetables that you can make a puree out of:
- Apple, Pear, Sweet Potato, Broccoli or Carrot
Just steam it for a few minutes, then blend with water and milk.
- Ripe Banana or Avocado
This is a no-cook recipe. So easy to make even on the go! Just cut banana or avocado into small pieces, then just mash’em with a masher or fork. You may want to add some milk too - breast milk or formula. Voila, ready to eat!
2. Rice porridge and anchovies.
Rice porridge is also a traditional especially for us Malaysians! Just boil rice with lots of water. Oh, but rice on its own could taste a little bit bitter, so you can also add anchovies that have been washed or soaked with water to remove the salt. Anchovies are rich in iron, great for your baby! When the porridge is soft, cool down before blending it finely.
3. Fish porridge with spinach
This is our favourite, because fish is not only packed with flavour, it is a great source of protein and various minerals such as iron, zinc, omega-3, and vitamin B12 - all important nutrients for healthy growth and development. We are also fortunate that fish in this part of the world is low in mercury, so your baby can experiment with various fish such as the red snapper (ikan merah), indian mackerel (kembong) or snapper (jenahak).
What you need:
How to make:
- Boil or steam the fish. Then take just the fish meat. Make sure you have removed all hidden bones in the meat
- Boil rice in water as usual to make rice porridge.
- When the porridge is almost done, put in the fish meat and spinach.
- When all is well cooked and done, cool down before blending it finely.
So, there, some recipes to help you get started. Stay tuned as we share more recipes in our next blog post!