Pureeing food

[Samr85]

My daughter is 6months and 2 weeks and I've been giving her puréed fruit and vegetables and attempted to purée the odd bit of minced beef or chicken in a meal with tomato or sweet potato for her but can't seem to get the meat totally smooth. She spits the lumpy meat bits out but it dosent seem to make any difference how long it's left in the blender for it still comes out with tiny lumps. What is the trick to getting smooth meaty meals please?

Hi there, I used to pass any meat or pureed food with bits in through a sieve. That worked very well for me.

Sorry if that didn't sound clear! I would blend as much as possible then put that in a sieve and use the back of a large spoon to pass it through the sieve.

Sorry if that didn't sound clear! I would blend as much as possible then put that in a sieve and use the back of a large spoon to pass it through the sieve.

Dunno. My dc were chewing and sucking at big chunks of meat from 6 months. The sieve method sounds plausible but a load of work.

Ella's kitchen (or similar) pouches! I pureed a lot of vege and fruit for my DS but with meat it just went horrible and he wouldn't touch it. You will never get it smooth or to a texture like the shop brought stuff.

For the short term there's no problem using jars/pouches for introducing meat until you are happy to move onto chunkier home-made stuff.

I stew my meat for hours and hours so it gets so soft it almost disintegrates and hardly any pureeing needed. Chicken I poach and get a similar result.

I did the same as sharon. But only for a few weeks, they were soon eating strips of chicken and lumps of slow cooked beef

Jar/pouch babyfood is supersmooth because of the (industrial-level) machinery used to pulverize itit's very difficult to get the same texture at home without a lot of work. To be honest, I just persisted with homemade purees for meat even though they weren't than smooththey will gag on it a bit at first but it's all a learning process, and I think there's something to be said for having babies exposed to lots of different texture early on rather than just silky-smooth pureed everything... I've heard too many stories of babies who got very used to everything being really smooth and then it was hard to get them onto lumpier things and table food later on. I used to offer meat pinch by pinch with my finger so that she was just getting tiny amounts in her mouth at a time.

Thank you so much fir your advice and ideas. I will try some out and see which works best for her. Thank again x

At 6 months she should be ok with texture anyway so I wouldn't worry about getting it too smooth. She will probably gag a bit, but stay calm and remember its part of her learning how to eat. My DD's first meat was a nice chunk of beef fished out of our casserole - she loved it and sucked it to death!