"For parents who make their own baby food - a question about making chicken for baby"

For chicken, I've boiled a breast or 2 and I've baked them. There was no difference in the texture after processing it.

Boiled: cut up a breast into chunks and boil in enough water to cover for ~15 minutes until no longer pink. Remove with a slotted spoon and cool. Cut into 1-2 inch chunks. Reserve the liquid.

Baked: whole breast, wrapped in aluminum foil, dollop of "butter", lemon juice. Baked at 400 until done by a thermometer (170 deg)

Make sure the chicken is cold before processing.

In your food processor (I used a blender), grind it up until it's almost a powder. I "pulsed" the blender. Then you add the reserved liquid.

Depending on the age of your child, you can add semolina pastina (BabiesRUs, Walmart).

When I'd introduced my children to various veggies, I'd puree them up and add them to the chicken mix.

The trick is to puree the chicken, dry and cold, first.

By the way, the same was done with pork, turkey and beef- I used stew beef to boil, but eye of round and top sirlion is good.

I liked making my own food because I could vary the texture. I look at jarred stage 3 food and it looks pureed, when my boys were eating little chunks because I could just blend it at different speeds.

Spices are good- never salt. I used tyme, basil, pepper in chicken.

Eventually, I would cook the meat, add the veggies to the water, just like a stew, and process- seperately with a food chopper. Then mix and freeze. More texture.

Then, here are the websites that I found absolutely invaluable:

http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/   the best!!!!!

http://www.americanbaby.com/ab/category.jhtml?categoryid=/templatedata/ab/category/data/Feeding_HomemadeBabyFood.xml  good, but annoying popups

http://www.nncc.org/Nutrition/make.babyfd.html

http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/Meals.htm

When you baby gets older:

http://www.wholesometoddlerfood.com/

When I was making baby food for my daughter, I used ground chicken.  I would cook the ground chicken in a pan, breaking it up into very tiny clumps, and then mix it into some mashed potatoes or yams or something.  It tasted good and my daughter loved it.  While it is not the consistency of jarred baby food, I found that my daughter did not have any trouble gumming the little clumps of meat.

I know this isn’t exactly what you were asking for, but I found that it worked and was pretty simple to prepare because I didn’t have to break out the blender or food processor.  If you can’t find ground chicken in your grocery store, you can ask the butcher to grind some for you, or use ground turkey, which, for some reason, is more common.  This also works with ground beef if you are going to introduce red meat.

As for using oil and spices: the baby book I had (What to Expect the First Year) recommended that no oil, butter, or salt be added to baby food.  However, it did say that you could use spices.  In fact, I would think that it would be a good idea to add spices that you cook with often, so that your baby gets used to the taste of them.

For meat, you should try baking the chicken 350 degrees for approx. 20 minutes a pound.  You will need a meat thermometer to make sure it says 165 degrees before you take it out of the oven.  Pull the meat off the bone and puree it with a little bit of water.  Don't add anything to it.  If you use the broth, it may come out tasting too strong for baby.

Here is a great website with lots of baby food making information:

http://www.wholesomebabyfood.com/

Good Luck!