8 month old - meat?

[erstwhilewre]

Hi!
I'm struggling to know how to feed my baby meat safely. How do I offer it to him without it being a choking hazard?
Also, can anyone advise what in general to have in as food basics?
I've got stuck feeding him purees, a bit of banana and rice cakes mostly, I genuinely don't know where to start with proper food due to the nerves of something going wrong - starting to feel like a pretty rubbish mum! Thanks!

I got what mummy makes recipe book. It was big help with suggestions

With meat I found strips of cooked chicken breast, steak etc were easy for DC to pick up and gum/suck/chew, their very effective at it. Same with meatballs.

More generally just try cutting lots of different things up into small pieces and putting them in front of him a few at a time. He'll have fun trying trying to pick them up and might actually eat some of them. Cooked carrot rounds, cubed cooked fish, breadsticks, raisins, cheese chunks, boiled egg quarters, the famous mumsnet cutted up pear quarters, etc!

Cut up strips that are easy to hold. By this age the food can be lumpier rather than puree
Experimenting with different textures is great especially at this age

Meatballs and paté were popular with mine at that age.

Chicken drumsticks are great for this age, they can use the bone to start creating a mental map of the mouth and will be able to eat some of the meat. Just make sure to remove all of the skin and the pin bone before serving.

Making a chicken liver pate to spread on the rice cakes would be a good option and fantastic for iron. Boil 1lb of livers with 1 onion. Drain and blend until smooth with 2tbsps of butter

Lamb or beef mince can be used to make koftas/burgers. Adding in mint/coriander to the koftas is a good way to introduce herbs and spices to little ones

Pork spare ribs cooked low and slow - 150C for 2hrs - are good too as once again the bone can be used to help create that mental map and the meat tends to fall off the bone. You can also shred the meat for them to pick up or carve strips from the bone before handing it to them

If you're worried about choking, it might be worth seeing if there are any Paediatric First Aid courses nearby or watching one of the Red Cross videos.

At 8 months there really aren't many foods to avoid so you can really go for it 

For meat dishes try:

Chicken Korma

Spag Bol

Cottage Pie

Chicken and Apricot Purée

Pork Casserole with Apple

Are you offering fish regularly as well @erstwhilewre? Boys can have oily fish 3 times a week.

Not sure how that's happened but it seems to have lost all of my links 🤦‍♀️

Pork casserole

Chicken & Apricot Puree

And chicken korma

Try the Solid Starts App - it has basically every food you could think of and how to safely feed it to your child at each stage. It also has videos of babies eating it so you can see what is normal I.e gagging, spitting out. It’s a great resource. Their Instagram is great too.