Contents
Mashed potatoes: how to cook for kids? Video
Mashed potatoes are a very healthy dish for both children and adults, but only if it is cooked correctly. The traditional “rough” dish is not suitable for babies – it can cause constipation in them. That is why it is so important to learn how to prepare a special baby puree.
Mashed potatoes for a child
Mashed potatoes: selection and preliminary preparation
When preparing mashed potatoes for babies, it is important to choose high-quality potatoes. Frozen, sprouted potatoes, as well as fruits with greens on the peel, in such cases, it is strictly not recommended to use.
Young potatoes should be preferred. The best option is to puree in the fall and winter, provided the vegetables have been stored properly. By spring, the level of solanine in potatoes increases, which can be harmful to the baby.
To make mashed potatoes for your baby, you should carefully peel the potatoes, removing all the “eyes”, if any, and then cut them into cubes and put in clean warm water for several hours. The best option is to soak the potatoes for XNUMX hours. This will help remove some of the starch that may be too heavy for a baby’s stomach. After soaking the potatoes, drain and rinse the pieces. Only then can the dish be prepared.
How to make mashed potatoes for a baby
Put potatoes in water and put a pot and put on fire. You can add a little salt to the dish, but do not overdo it: when preparing food for an infant, it is better not to put salt at all than to overdo it with it. Simmer the potatoes until tender. Then drain some of the water, leaving some liquid at the bottom, and mash the vegetables. Please note: during the cooking process, some of the nutrients “go” into the water, so it is undesirable to completely drain the liquid from the pan and replace it with a clean one. As a last resort, you can add vegetable broth – this will be more useful for the child.
To make complementary foods easier to perceive, you can add a little milk to the puree, including breast milk. Then the potato mass should be transferred to a blender and mixed thoroughly. It is very important to do this: the puree should be light, airy, without a single lump. Otherwise, it will be more difficult for the child to eat it, and poorly whipped mashed potatoes with hard lumps may not affect the digestion process in the best way.
Introducing such a complementary food, it is recommended to add a few other chopped boiled vegetables to the mashed potatoes – this will make the dish even healthier and tastier. However, in any case, at first, it is worthwhile to introduce such a dish into the menu with caution: try to give the baby 2-3 tablespoons of puree and see if he likes this dish. If, after such a meal, the baby begins to have digestive problems, exclude him from the diet for a while.