{Instant Pot} Baby Food

Hello!  Jana here with a tutorial for how to easily make baby food in the Instant Pot!  My fourth child is 6 months old, so we are in the early stages of eating table food. Making your own baby food is beneficial for so many reasons!  First of all, it is the most inexpensive way to feed your baby. An entire bag of organic baby carrots (32 ounces) costs $3.48 in my area. From my research, non organic jarred carrots would cost about $1 for two 2.5 ounce containers. As you can see, you can get a higher quality food for much cheaper when you make it yourself!  Some of you might be thinking that the time it takes to make the food isn't worth the cost savings. I can assure you, that it only takes minutes to prepare the food.  Below, I am going to show you an example of making carrots using the Instant Pot. There are many other foods that could be prepared in a similar way, including the following:

Green Beans (using a steamer basket instead of a trivet)
Peas (using a steamer basket instead of the trivet)
Apples
Pears
Squash (peeled first)

From my experience, homemade baby food is much more flavorful, which makes it more fun for baby to learn to eat!  I like that you can add more or less water, depending on what stage of eating your baby is in. You can also begin to mash instead of blend once your baby gets older. I also like to start adding spices (cinnamon, garlic, etc) to foods once my baby gets older. (typically closer to 8 or 9 months) 

I will also discuss below how to store the baby food that you make.

To make the carrot baby food, I placed about 20 carrots on the trivet in the IP. I could have stacked them and done more, but I wasn't making a huge amount of baby food this time. Pour 1 cup of water or broth in the bottom of the IP. Close the lid, push Manual, and choose 4 minutes. You can do quick release or natural release once it is finished.

 

Add some of the water back in if needed (depending on how thick or thin you want the consistency for your baby), and puree. I used an immersion blender for this step, but you could also use a normal blender. I have found that if I make more baby food than what I will need for a few days (and can refrigerate), then freezing in some sort of ice cube tray works great!  I prefer silicone trays, because the food comes out much easier when frozen.  The trays I used above are a little bigger than the size I wanted, so I filled about halfway.

Once they are frozen, you can remove from the tray, and store in a Ziploc bag or other container in the freezer. Then, just remove the amount you are needing for the day, microwave, and you're ready to go!