Freezing - Advice needed from an expert baby food freezer if poss!

[ClareMegan]

Hiya!

Hope someone can help Got a few questions about freezing (some seem logical but still need reassurance!). DD is 7 months and has been weaning for about 5 weeks now (veg puree, fruit etc).

1. I'm planning on cooking up loads of veg seperately, then meal bases (such as rice, pasta, lentils, cous-cous, chicken etc), then sauces.

Things like cheese/tomato sauce i know are OK to freeze if they are in meal-form but can they be frozen seperately in ice cube trays? I want to do it this way so i have loads of meal possibilities rather than cooking up dishes that she might not even be fond of! - This is one that seems logical but i just need someone to tell me its ok!! =)

2. Can i freeze - baked beans (do i need to warm them as normal before freezing?), chickpea, cous-cous?

Does anyone else do the same (freezing all ingredients seperate)?

Advice would be much appreciated!

All of your 1) I froze for mine. Including the sauces in ice cubes or wee pots.

I'm unsure about your 2)s as they are all easy to prepare. I can't think why it shouldn't be possible to freeze them. I don't know about baked beans though, but then we're not keen on them in this family.

hth

Thanks frosty

I'm the same with baked beans (hate em!) so i would rather freeze baby-size portions if poss to avoid waste.

I tend to feed baby on the move - so i just get ice cubes out of a morning so they are thawed and ready to warm at lunch. Anyone else frozen cous-cous etc?

Thanks again - at 7 months old this baby eats far better than mummy and daddy already!

Well I can't see any reason why you can't freeze them. I wait to be corrected mind lol

Just out of interest, which foods are you aware of that you cant freeze?

I know the basics like banana, avocado, mango. Any others which don't freeze well?

You shouldn't freeze rice apparently. Got some kind of bacteria in it that is a baddy - that said, I froze risotte before I knew that and my kids lived through the experience.

I did exactly what you described - making ice cube trays of different sauces, different veg and fruit and even meats (but I learned that really it's easier to make a casserole and blitz it up rather than try and cook meat and blend on its own.) I did freeze mashed potato as that takes a while to make but not cous cous because it only takes 5 mins. I would freeze pasta but only if it was in a pasta bake (like tuna pasta bake)

I'm concerned about meat. I've been feeding dd solids for about 3 weeks, just veg and fruit and baby rice. I always want to cook larger amounts and freeze them , but for example what about chicken? You have to be very careful reheating cooked chicken don't you? And does it blend down to a puree?

As you can see, I'm nervous and clueless! Any advice appreciated.

Chicken is fine to freeze, you need to make sure it is completely cooked, chill, then freeze it, and you can only heat it up once after it's frozen. Repeated reheating is when the bacteria start to breed.

Have you fed your baby couscous yet? I tried it today. DD tried to feed herself. Oh my God! the mess. Not again for a long while. Those little, sticky bits were all over everything.

Why aren't we aloud to freeze banana??

And i have also frozen tons of rice:-( AND how long can everything stay in the freezer for??

it goes brown and horrible

It's absolutely fine to freeze rice.

info here

I can honestly say I frozen everything
Banana, rice the lot! No problems to report either.
I have frozen Baked beans too as I had a recipe for a Baked Bean casserole.
To start with I froze it all in ice cube trays and then as she got a bit older and was eating bigger portions, I just spooned them into sandwich bags and froze that way.

I did the same like you NSYF. Banana, rice, couscous, Bread, etc. I mean my dd is fine with it all i just hope i am not doing her more harm than good!

(Thanks for the article!!)

god appauling typing

"froze" not frozen everything.
[cringe]

I didn't even notice

i used to make up massive batches of food for ds. vegetables, morrocan lamb, fish pie, you name it he had it i used to spoon it into ice cube trays then empty them into a tupperware pot

Thanks for reply MWH. My next problem is that I don't have a microwave. I defrost my ice cubes of veg or fruit in the fridge, but fridge cold is a bit too cold for babies. I know they don't really need to have their food warm, but I want to get it to lukewarm. I put a little container in a bowl of hot water, but it's not very effective! Any ideas?

Also, my book says that you should heat everything to piping hot, then cool it down for your baby. I don't have that sort of time! Is this really necesssary for veg? I can see that it's safer for meat...

Heat it in a tiny pan on the hob?

You can freeze banana - frozen whole the skins go black and the banana goes runny when thawed but it's fine for baking and in stuff. I freeze banana porridge for example. As others have said, freezing the components of a meal separately is fine. I found it easy with DSs to "construct" a variety of meals that way.

I'd steer clear of baked beans as they can be high in both salt and sugar - I'm not sure the "low" versions are much better as they add sweeteners and something for the salt I think.

Heating - can you put a container in a saucepan of water and boil it, thus heating the food in the container?

Heating was one of the other reasons I froze the batches of food in sandwich bags, because not everywhere we went had microwaves. The food can be taken out easily unlike in a container and just put it in a pan and heat that way.
That way you know its hot all the way through. Microwaves always leave hot spots.

I freeze anything and everything! Soemthings com out badly (banana being the obvious, but I knew that (honestly).