picture of baby led weaning veggie risotto

EASY PEASY VEG-LED WEANING

EASY PEASY VEG-LED WEANING With the Béaba Babycook Neo

If your little one won’t eat their veggies, you’re not alone! Some love them but others just aren’t interested. Making small changes and adding vegetables in different ways, over time will hopefully lead to them enjoying a wider variety.

It can take a lot of time and effort to develop a taste for vegetables, this includes cooking them in different ways, adding different flavours and keeping up with the exposure.

Making delicious, tempting meals, which your baby will love, using vegetables is super easy with Béaba’s Babycook Neo, 4-in-1 baby food maker. Simple, safe, stylish and convenient, its unique blend function means that you can adjust the time of blending to gain the desired consistency for your meals based on age and stage. So as baby grows, chunkier purée and different textures can be created to suit their tastes.

Plus, the Neo is currently the ONLY baby food maker that comes with a large (1,250ml) glass bowl and increased capacity stainless steel steam basket, which means that parents can prepare 33% more ingredients in one go.

Simply place the food into the steamer and the Neo cooks it, preserving the flavours and the vitamins, it will automatically turn off when the food is cooked, which avoids overcooking.

Together with @my.little.food.critic , Béaba has compiled the following top tips to help encourage little ones to try a variety of vegetables in a fun and engaging way.

Top tips to introduce a variety of vegetables:

1. Get toddlers involved with the shopping! It’s a great opportunity to talk about different vegetables and perhaps let them pick one they’d like to try. When they feel involved in the process it can spark their interest to give something a go.

2. Serve new vegetables/vegetables they don’t enjoy alongside favourite and familiar foods without any pressure. Keep the serving small as you don’t want to overwhelm them.

3. Add flavour and texture! Roasting, steaming, and adding a range of spices to enhance the flavour can really make a big difference.

4. Get your little ones in the kitchen! Even touching, smelling and playing with vegetables counts as an exposure. When they are helping to cook and there is no pressure to try something, they might surprise you! Cooking together also allows for opportunities to discuss why our bodies need different types of food and how they help us to grow.

5. Add vegetables to foods they enjoy, for example, if your little one likes smoothies – add in some spinach or cauliflower.

Remember, being consistent and persistent is key, some children need to be offered a food over 15 times before trying it.

Get your cook on with this tasty veggie risotto recipe, packed full of flavour and nutrition.

SUITABLE FROM 8-months

MAKES 6 servings / PREPARE 10 mins / COOK 30 minutes

INGREDIENTS

1 carrot, peeled and finely chopped
½ courgette, finely chopped
½ onion, finely chopped
A handful of spinach, finely chopped
1 heaped tsp minced garlic
½ cup/100g risotto rice
1 ½ cups/360ml low salt/no salt vegetable stock
2 tbsp butter
½ cup/45g parmesan cheese

INSTRUCTIONS

Add the carrots, courgette, onion, spinach and garlic to the steaming basket and fill the water reservoir to level 2, and steam cook.
Carefully open the lid, discard the water at the bottom of the blending bowl and then tip the cooked veggies into a pan and set aside.
Add the risotto rice to the Babycook® Pasta/Rice cooker. Fill the water reservoir to water level 3 and add 1 1/2 cups/360ml vegetable stock to the insert with the risotto rice. Steam cook.
Once steamed, carefully open the lid, place the cooked rice into the pan with the veggies.
Pour in the water at the bottom of the blending bowl. Stir to combine.
Add the butter and Parmesan cheese, stirring until everything is well combined.
Serve and enjoy! Or you can blend this down to your babies preferred texture if you like.
This can be stored in the fridge for 2 days or frozen for up to 3 months.