Reading Right Now: The Multi-Cooker Baby Food Cookbook
Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post although I did receive a free copy of the book from the publisher and author for this post. This post does contain affiliate links.
Reading Right Now: The Multi-Cooker Baby Food Cookbook
That Instant Pot can make SO many types of foods for your self-feeding baby! I sat down with Jenna Helwig, author of The Multi-Cooker Baby Food Cookbook and the Food Editor at Parents Magazine to talk about IP cooking for BLW…
What is a Multi-Cooker Anyway?!
If Instant Post fever hasn’t hit your household yet - maybe this is the book you need to get the fire started. Author Jenna Helwig - who is also the Food Editor at Parents Magazine - wrote this book for all of you out there looking for easy at home ways to prepare food for your baby.
Jenna previously wrote the books Baby-Led Feeding and Real Baby Food, but she decided to write THIS book “The Multi-Cooker Baby Food Cookbook” because soon after she started using an Instant Pot at home, she realized that the appliance was ideal for also making baby food.
“Not only does it cook food quickly to a perfectly soft texture [the Instant Pot] lets parents walk away during the cook time (hooray!)”
Baby Food Prep as a Gateway to Cooking
When I sat down to talk with Jenna about her newest book, we spoke a little bit about parents we both work with who are overwhelmed or intimated by the idea of cooking food for their babies…or even cooking at all.
Something that Jenna said in our conversation really resonated with me, and that was her description of preparing baby food for her now teenager as a “gateway” to cooking.
“Back then, it was really having to prepare wholesome food for my baby that got me more involved in the kitchen. Making real baby food helped me develop a passion for food and cooking that drives me both personally and professionally today!”
As a Registered Dietitian specializing in baby-led weaning and a mom of 7, I could not agree with Jenna more! Wholesome foods for your baby don’t just magically appear on the table - but nobody has all day to make them either. That’s why I love this new Multi-Cooker Baby Food Cookbook…because it lets the Instant Pot do most of the work for us!
(If you’re in the market for a multi-cooker, we have the 8-quart Instant Pot and I love it but cooking for 10 people here at home every day, I still wish it was a little bigger :)
A Few Reasons Why I Loved This Cookbook
OK, a quick rundown of some of my favorite components of this new cookbook:
Jenna Embraces Purees and Self-Feeding by Spoon
As an experienced author and food professional, Jenna knows a thing or two about food writing. But what I LOVE is that she also is open to the idea of utilizing purees in a self-feeding approach for babies. Her book incorporates a number of easy starter food purees - but she acknowledges the importance of pre-loading a spoon and allowing baby to self-feed, and important component of baby-led weaning that I teach in all of my BLW courses and materials.
One of my favorite puree recipes in the book is Cucumber Puree that is served cool. Very easy to do an Instant Pot and not a typical puree you see every day.
Jenna Lets Vegetables Shine
Too many baby food cookbooks say “make your baby kale” and then it’s just blended with applesauce! Babies can AND should be given the opportunity to learn about the flavors of foods, including vegetables, on their own. You don’t HAVE to bathe everything in a fruit puree to get your baby to eat it.
As she rightly points out in the book, our goal isn’t to MAKE babies eat kale, it’s to give them an opportunity to try the foods and flavors associated with learning to eat - and they don’t all have to be accompanied by fruit sweetened ingredients!
Don’t get me wrong - there’s nothing wrong with fruit. It just doesn’t have to mask the real flavor of vegetables and other foods your baby is learning about during this crucial phase of development!
Jenna Can Actually Make Yogurt in an Instant Pot :)
I have tried this numerous times. And failed miserably. I have HEARD about making delicious IP yogurt, but 3 out of 3 times I tried using hack recipes from the internet, it came out thing and nothing close to yogurt.
Here’s what I learned from Jenna’s book - the secret ingredient is a candy thermometer.
I tried her IP yogurt recipe and voila, huge cost savings vs. buying yogurt and this one tastes better than anything you can buy!
Getting her Greek-Style Yogurt recipe and proven cooking technique for it in the IP is reason enough to buy this new book!
Instant Pot is Your Baby’s Best Friend for Meat
If there’s one area of food prep my baby-led weaning community STRUGGLES with…that is preparing meats for baby.
Yeah, yeah, we all know about the importance of iron. And yes the type of iron in animal foods like meat is better absorbed by babies’ bodies.
But so many of us are working on putting more PLANTS into our diet, that when it comes to making MEAT for our babies, we’re kind of at a loss.
One reason why I loved this new cookbook was that Jenna included a ton of meat-based recipes that are SO easy to make (…basically because the multi-cooker or Instant Pot does it for you!)
Some of my favorite high iron meat recipes from the Multi-Cooker Baby Food Cookbook include:
Sweet & Savory Lamb Stew
Just Meatballs
Chicken Nuggets
Beef with Barley & Carrots
Spiced Pork with Orange Crema
Spring Lamb Soup
Chicken Curry Meatballs Pg 154
Easy Instant Pot Beef Recipe
This was the first recipe I made from Jenna’s new book and it was so delicious. She was kind enough to share the recipe with me, and I’m posting it here for you.
Beef with Barley and Carrots Recipe
There are three great ways to serve this stew: purée or mash it for beginning eaters, shred the beef and let baby self-feed, or let older babies and toddlers dig in with a spoon.
Ingredients
½ pound boneless beef chuck, trimmed of fat and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 large carrot, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
¼ cup uncooked barley
½ cup low-sodium beef broth
Instructions
Combine the beef, carrot, barley, and broth in the multi-cooker. Lock the lid and set to cook on high pressure for 30 minutes. When cooking is complete, press “Cancel” and carefully quick-release the pressure.
Slow Cook It:
Double the recipe, but use 1 cup low-sodium beef broth and 1 cup water. Cover and cook on Low for 6 to 8 hours, or until the beef is very tender.
Age it Up:
Add ¾ teaspoon kosher salt before cooking.
Nutrition per serving (1/4 cup):
77 calories; 6g protein; 3g fat (1g sat. fat); 6g carbohydrates; 1g fiber; 0g sugars; 56mg sodium; 9mg calcium; 0.8mg iron; 136mg potassium; 0mg vitamin C; 1,279IU vitamin A
Beef with Barley and Carrots is excerpted from THE MULTI-COOKER BABY FOOD COOKBOOK: 100 Easy Recipes for Your Slow Cooker, Pressure Cooker, or Multi-Cooker© 2019 by Jenna Helwig. Photography © 2019 by Lauren Volo. Reproduced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.
A Little More About Jenna Helwig
During our conversation I learned a few other interesting facts about Jenna…namely that in addition to being a freelance writer and author, the Food Editor at Parents Magazine and a mom, she also owns a personal chef business in New York called Rosaberry.
She’s also written 2 other fabulous BLW related books, Baby-Led Feeding and Real Baby Food. You can get her latest book The Multi-Cooker Baby Food Cookbook on Amazon.
Interview with Jenna: Cooking for Baby in the IP
Jenna was kind enough to sit down and visit with me on a recent livestream. She answers a TON of questions about using the instant-pot for creating baby-led weaning foods in this video. Click here to watch.
Still Nervous About Making Baby Food?…
For those of you still on the fence about whether or not you can make your baby’s own food for baby-led weaning, Jenna’s mantra is, “It’s going to be fine!”
Her biggest piece of advice is not to stress out too much. She acknowledges that there are lots of different options out there about what to introduce when and how, “What matters most is that you follow your baby’s cues and help foster a fun - not pressure-filled - feeding environment. THAT will put your baby on the right track for a lifetime of happy, healthy eating.”
For more info about Jenna Helwig and her new cookbook, check out her website here.
