Baby food maker recommendations

I totally agree with the last few posters. You will be providing nutrition for the next 18 years so you might as well start getting your head around it.
A 6 month old does not need smooth purées but if you do not want to jump straight to fully solid food use a fork (or if larger amounts a stick blender) to mush things . Break it down in your mind it's not as complicated a you imagine.
Breakfast: porridge or weetabix and some fruit.
Lunch: soup or a sandwich with some yoghourt and fruit or chopped veg.
Dinner pasta and sauce, curry, shepherds pie, fish and veg, omelette, etc normal foods .

The phase when they eat puréed food is very short, 2-3 months at best. Then they need healthy home cooking. Use your blender to make a few purées if you must supplemented with pouches and spend your time and money meal planning and learning to cook. You’ll have another 17+ years of needing to feed her so time to figure it out.

Good post @FusionChefGeoff. Picking three things that you already eat fr your meals and learning to cook them is a way of starting to cook family meals but it's not too overwhelming.

Meals don't need to be complicated. And most people cook the same things over and over again.

At some point you will have to start cooking proper dinners (e.g. spaghetti bolognese not from a jar) because the jars of baby food are only suitable for up to 18 months or so (if that). Might as well start now.

For the first few months they can just have pureed fruit and veg. This takes very little effort to make. Stick veg in a steamer for 10-20mins, blend with a stick blender, put in freezer pots. Done. The Ella's Kitchen purple book has recipes and tells you how long each thing takes to cook - you can usually pick up a free trial version in boots.

So to answer your question, you need a small basket steamer, a cheap hand stick blender and some silicon ice cube trays. I would get these rather than a special baby food machine because they can be used for other things e.g. steaming veg for adults or older kids, making soup etc.

Hand blender and a bowl - take out portion of your food before adding salt and blend and freeze into small pots (recommend buying loads of this). Buy a hand blender with detachable blade so it can go into the dishwasher.

My sister went for the steamer blender thing but found it very hard to wash it daily.

Highly recommend the Annabel karmel app- it's a good starting point

I have a stick blender. I mostly just blend up some of what we’re having but I also get bags of frozen sweet potato, butternut, mixed veg etc so that if we’re having something really unhealthy or not eating til late etc I can quickly microwave some veg for him. He eats some normal food but he prefers to fill up a bit on the purée first. Started off making smoother purées, now it’s pretty chunky (8months).

If we’re having casserole, chilli etc I tend to not give him the sauce (so just fish out meat, veg, beans etc) to avoid excessive salt, not that I use a lot anyway but I’d rather not risk it.

You will be providing nutrition for the next 18 years so you might as well start getting your head around it.

This for me too OP. At the beginning you can just mush up banana, avocado, sweet potato, broccolli, whatever else with a fork. But from there it's just "normal" food, but with less salt (and spice, if you're that way inclined). DD is now two. Since 8 months she's had porridge for breakfast, lots of soups, little sandwiches with the crusts off, all sorts of fruit and veg, pasta in tomato sauce etc. All baby friendly.

hand blender and this book saw me through www.thebookpeople.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/qs_product_tbp?storeId=10001&catalogId=10051&langId=100&productId=705238&gclid=CjwKCAjwxOvsBRAjEiwAuY7L8s_8XXg5vpwwuM-soy1nuKO34tUHioChMA60B192NrozeuzHRIod8BoCEI8QAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

It's definitely worth taking a look at your diet and seizing the opportunity to start making healthier meals for you all. It doesn't take much longer to do fresh sauce than jars and you can all have it together. DD is 8mo and we all eat the same meal every day together at the table. Last night was spaghetti bol, night before was fish and veg, tonight it'll be chicken bake probably. None of them takes long to make. I didn't want her to reach a stage where she's aware that we are eating different things when there's no real reason other than laziness!

Also we just cook without salt and either portion off some of DD's during cooking or just add salt when it's served. It's made us realise how much stuff doesn't actually need it added in the first place!

OP don’t feel that you have go BLW if it doesn’t suit you and your family. I didn’t with any of mine - a lot of the food we eat is not appropriate for very small babies and not easily adaptable either. So it was purees initially and then a mix of purees and handheld options, with bits of what we were eating if appropriate.

I can highly recommend the Philips Avent steamer blender - perfect for smooth purees initially and lumpier stuff later. It’s done me for 4 babies. And the lack of BLW hasn’t done any of them any harm as far as I can tell!

I just use a steamer then a stick blender, it's less washing up than my proper blender. We eat dinner later than my little boy as have to wait for partner to get home so I try to give him what we had the day before. Not all our meals are adaptable but I do try where possible to give what we have.

With 100% BLW I find a lot ends up on the floor - I try to give him some food on a spoon first then some finger food so he has a mix.