Mushrooms: How to Offer Mushrooms Safely to Babies

Well That's Interesting (0s):

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Katie Ferraro (33s):

And after that experience, I actually moved away from an including any Sautee mushroom recipes inside of my entire program because I do not care what anyone else says. It is impossible to get a sauteed solo mushroom soft enough to pass the squish test so that it's safe for an early eater. Heck yeah, you could do that for older babies. But the point is we want our early eaters to have exposure to all these different foods and flavors and tastes and textures. So we're skipping the Sautee Mushrooms and we're preparing mushrooms this way instead for our earlier eaters now. Hey there. I'm Katie Ferraro, registered dietitian, college nutrition professor and mom of seven specializing in baby led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (1m 16s):

Here on the baby led weaning with Katie Ferraro podcast. I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, giving you the confidence and knowledge You need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning. Hello and welcome back. Today we're talking about mushrooms and I know that people feel passionately about mushrooms. You either love them or you dislike them. Kids are particularly notorious for disliking Mushrooms, But babies, if you catch them during the all important flavor window, right, where they'll like and accept a wide variety of foods and flavors and tastes and textures, I promise you that your baby, if you get them there, you're gonna have a mushroom lover for life on your hands, or at least for the period of time where the flavor window is open.

Katie Ferraro (2m 8s):

So I like to start each of these mini training episodes with a baby led weaning tip of the day. I got a mushroom. Fun fact for you is that mushrooms are actually the only non-animal un fortified, substantial source of vitamin D available in foods. So I don't know if your baby was totally never, ever going in the sun and you did absolutely no dairy foods, you could use mushrooms as a way to get your baby some of that important sunshine vitamin. But hang tight because today I'm gonna be talking about some different types of mushrooms and how you can safely offer them to babies because spoiler alert, sauteing mushrooms does not cut it.

Katie Ferraro (2m 49s):

And quick story. So my friend Ashley with her second baby when they were starting solid foods, we were doing a hundred First Foods, she'd come over to my house or do parent coaching with her daughter and we were gonna do mushrooms. And she's like, heck yeah, make my baby mushrooms. 'cause my older daughter hates mushrooms and I have a couple kids that don't love Mushrooms either. My intern at the time bought 10 different types of Mushrooms and we sauteed them in butter in oil, like different times, different temperatures. It was impossible to get any of the mushrooms to pass the squish test. So the squish test is where if you press the food, in this case, the mushroom between your forefinger and your thumb, that there's a little bit of give all of these foods work so rubbery. I would never offer them to this six month old baby.

Katie Ferraro (3m 31s):

So we had to go back to the drawing board and actually took a Sautee mushrooms entirely out of my program because after doing all this experimentation, I was like, if I can't even get these safe in my own home kitchen, like why would I ever recommend sauteed Mushrooms in phase one, which is the first eight weeks of baby led weaning. So I've got a new two different ways that we do mushrooms for babies, and I'm gonna be sharing those with you today, but I'm totally off of sauteed Mushrooms 'cause you just can't get them soft enough for early eaters. Now what are Mushrooms? Let's start there. If you absolutely hate them, as I know a lot of people do, they're an edible fungi. They're not even technically a vegetable. But on my hundred First Foods list, we do have Mushrooms listed under vegetable because I mean to most of us, we consider mushrooms to be a vegetable.

Katie Ferraro (4m 17s):

Okay? We treat Mushrooms like vegetables in meals, and there's a big variety of Mushrooms out there, right? You can buy button mushrooms, cremini, portobellos. You can buy like the longer STEMI type ones like oysters or trumpet Mushrooms. Again, I've tried 'em all under lots of different temperatures. It's really, really hard. Basically impossible to get them super soft for early eaters. So what forms of Mushrooms are best? Okay? Most of us are probably going to encounter fresh mushrooms, but we're not gonna offer them raw, okay? We don't offer most fruits or vegetables in their raw form for babies. With very few exceptions. We're gonna want to cook them, and I'll be sharing with you two different ways that I cook mushrooms to make 'em safe. For early eaters, frozen mushrooms are another option.

Katie Ferraro (4m 59s):

Frozen Mushrooms tend to have been blanched, meaning that they've been cooked for a very short period of time to kind of maximize their freshness and their texture. And if you cook them until soft, you can get frozen mushrooms to work for. Baby led weaning. Dried Mushrooms generally do not work for baby led weaning unless you're like totally pulverizing them and then using them kind of mixed with something else. Canned Mushrooms, canned work, except most brands of canned mushrooms are gonna have too much added salt for babies. So if you can find no added salt mushrooms, I personally have never seen them. Great, go for it. You can always rinse your canned items. So rinsing canned foods under the faucet reduces the sodium level by about a third.

Katie Ferraro (5m 41s):

Generally, we're looking for less than a hundred milligrams of sodium per serving of foods that we're offering to babies. Now, what do you not wanna do? We don't wanna offer the raw Mushrooms, and obviously we don't wanna go offering wild or forage mushrooms to babies. Of course, there's that safety risk for potential toxicity. So let's stick to the commercially grown Mushrooms. All right, so that's what the Mushrooms are. Now, why would you wanna feed a baby Mushrooms? I mentioned the nutrition win that as far as a vitamin D goes, mushrooms can contribute Vitamin D. There are certain types of mushrooms as well, their exposed to UV light that they can be a source of vitamin D for babies, but mushrooms also have selenium and potassium.

Katie Ferraro (6m 21s):

They're naturally low in sodium And they have no added sugar. So let's move on to flavor and texture opportunities. Oftentimes mushrooms get described as having an umami, which is a savory or meaty kind of flavor and texture. So sometimes the people will add them to meat. It's kind of called this the mushroom blend to extend the flavor of meat. It was kind of a trendy thing back when there's a lot of focus on saturated fat. Like one of the ways you could cut saturated fat in ground meat products was to make it half blended mushroom and half meat. Mushrooms have a unique kind of spongy or rubbery texture, which again, for early eaters is not ideal, but for an older baby, you definitely can work in those sauteed mushrooms. It's just not something we wanna do for your six or seven month old baby who's really just starting to explore with food.

Katie Ferraro (7m 5s):

So remember this principle that early exposure to a variety of different foods like mushrooms supports general acceptance. So you wanna take advantage of it during that flavor window, okay? But as far as a reality check from a nutrition standpoint goes, mushrooms do not contain iron. Okay? We're gonna have to find iron rich foods elsewhere in the diet, but we kind of offer Mushrooms because of their potential for vitamin D, because of the taste opportunity, because of the texture, and it's another vegetable that you're knocking off of your list. If you don't yet have a copy of my original hundred First Foods list, I give it away to everybody on my free masterclass called Baby LED WEANING FOR BEGINNERS. This is a one hour free online video training where I show you exactly how to make foods safe so your baby can start eating real food from their first bites.

Katie Ferraro (7m 53s):

Everybody on that masterclass gets a copy of my original a hundred First Foods list, so you'll never run out of ideas of foods your baby can eat. You can sign up for the masterclass and take it right now, later today when your baby naps tomorrow, whatever works for your schedule, check it out at baby led weaning dot co slash masterclass. Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, but I'll be right back. Now, when can your baby eat mushrooms? Okay, once your baby's ready to start solid foods and showing you the reliable signs of readiness to eat, which is around six months of age, Mushrooms can be one of the FIRST FOODS I mentioned.

Katie Ferraro (8m 35s):

My friend, Ashley's baby, we did mushrooms as her first vegetables. It was actually, she was six months plus two weeks old, and that's when we started offering mushrooms. They just have to be prepared safely. How many, how much would you offer to a baby? Remember, it's not important to know exactly how much of a food a baby is eating. That is not our primary concern. We wanna offer that variety of foods and don't get bogged down if you're like, oh my gosh, but my baby didn't really eat two tablespoons of it or an ounce of it. That's not what's important. Offer it a variety of times in My program, BABY led weaning with Katie Ferraro. We offer the new food for about 10 minutes for the first part of the meal, and then the second part of the meal, we bring in two familiar foods from previous days plus the new food of the day.

Katie Ferraro (9m 21s):

So we're working on 20 minute meals one to two times a day. When your baby is six to seven months of age, bump that up to two to three times when the baby is eight to nine months of age and by 10 months of age. We like to see your baby eating three times a day if you can. As far as the size of the foods that we offer to early eaters, they're cut about the size of your adult pinky finger. So that's hard to do with mushrooms on their own because the plain sauteed Mushrooms, you can get them to that size, but they're not gonna pass that squished test. So what are the preparation methods that I'm now using in place of sauteed mushrooms? Well, one of my favorite recipes is the mini mushroom meatloaf. This is one of the most popular recipes in my baby led weaning program.

Katie Ferraro (10m 4s):

Why does it work? Because it's a soft, cohesive, easy to hold finger food that's got that mushroom flavor built in the mini mushroom meatloaf from a texture check standpoint, it should mash easily. There's no hard edges. We cook them off in mini loaf pans, so they bake in these rectangular loaf pans that you can easily cut into pieces about the size of your adult pinky finger, tons of flavor. Plus we're cooking it alongside meat so it has ground meat in it. You can do this with bison, with Turkey, with beef, whatever you have on hand, but you're getting the iron from the meat, plus you're working the mushroom in for the flavor and the texture and the nutrition there.

Katie Ferraro (10m 44s):

Another popular mushroom recipe inside of my baby led weaning program. It's called mushroom fritters. This is very basic. Now your baby has to have already passed egg because this recipe, like all the fritter recipes in my program does contain egg. And we also have egg substitute options for families if they have egg allergy. But if your baby's past egg, the egg kind now helps hold all of the ingredients together in the fritter recipes. And basically the mushrooms become part of a bound mixture, which is a safer texture for early eaters. The fritter should be soft inside, not crunchy or hard. We cook it until the egg is fully set and still tender. Cool it, and then cut 'em into pieces about the size of the adult pinky finger so the baby can pick those mushroom fritters up.

Katie Ferraro (11m 31s):

We did this with baby Braden who couldn't have the sauteed mushrooms, and it was such an easier way for her to pick it up and bring it to her mouth. Ironically, she'd already had egg in the past and we thought she wasn't allergic to egg. When we vet her the mushroom fritters, she actually did have an allergic reaction and that's how we found out this particular baby was indeed allergic to egg. So that is just a reminder of the importance to be reintroducing those allergenic foods early and often. Alright, so just to recap, new vegetable of the week, if you're looking for one, why not knock off mushroom, skip the sauteed Mushrooms, and instead, once your baby's already passed egg, you can work the pulverized cooked mushrooms into a very simple mushroom fritter recipe or a mini mushroom meatloaf recipe that works as a beautiful easy finger food.

Katie Ferraro (12m 21s):

If you want to grab access to all of these recipes along with my 100 First Foods Daily Meal Plan, I've got 20 weeks of done for you menus and meal plans. I'm gonna transition your baby through all of these challenging textures. All of that is inside of my comprehensive online program called Baby Led Weaning with Katie Ferraro. You can check that out at baby led weaning.co/program. I've also got a discount code for you to join at $50 off wherever you're listening to or watching this podcast. It's in the description. Grab that. Come join us. Get past your fear of mushrooms. You might even find yourself trying some of these mushroom recipes. I'll go ahead and put the links to all of the resources mentioned in today's episode on the show notes, which you can find@bwpodcast.com/97.

Airwave Media (13m 10s):

a special thank you to our partners at AirWave Media. If you guys like podcasts that feature food and science and using your brain, check out some of the podcasts from AirWave. We're online@bwpodcast.com.

Katie Ferraro (13m 23s):

Thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you next time. Bye now.