Katie Ferraro (0s):

The problem with the sauces at the store is that they tend to be too high in sodium. I'm cool with less than a hundred milligrams of sodium per serving for a food that I'm going to serve to my baby. Hey there, I'm Katie Ferraro, Registered Dietitian college nutrition, professor and mom of seven specializing in baby-led weaning here on the baby-led weaning made easy podcast. I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, leaving you with the competence and knowledge you need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby-led weaning. Hello and welcome back, baby-ledbaby-led weaning fans.

Katie Ferraro (43s):

This is an episode for those of you who love recipes. I know some people like to learn how to make the food safer baby-led weaning to get other people are like, can you please just tell me exactly what to make? So this is an episode about sauces and it's five baby led weaning sauce, recipes to make swallowing safer. Now you might hear me talk very often about the importance of ensuring that we're not feeding baby Dry foods like dry carbohydrate foods, dry protein foods because those foods increase choking risks. We say, well, how can you make them less dry? We can cook them different ways or choose different cuts of meat or make different variations of the whole grain. But you can also always add a dipper or a topper or a sauce to your food in order to add more moisture, which in turn can help babies swallow their food more easily.

Katie Ferraro (1m 30s):

So I have created a free download for you guys that has five baby-led weaning sauce, recipes to help make swallowing safer. I'm going to link to them directly on the show notes page for this episode for, so for those of you who don't like to listen to the whole episode and just want the download BLWpodcast.com/207. But the key with these sauces is that they're low sodium because yeah, you could go to the store and buy the same five sauces, which I'm going to go through pretty quickly in a second. You could buy them and serve them to your baby. But the problem with the sauces at the store is that they tend to be too high in sodium. So our general rule of thumb for baby led weaning, and this is my rule of thumb, but it works pretty well.

Katie Ferraro (2m 15s):

Having done this now exclusively for a number of years, I've worked with tens of thousands of families and most families are in agreement with like, Hey, there's no hard and fast guidelines about sodium. I'm cool with less than a hundred milligrams of sodium per serving for a food that I'm going to serve to my baby, the rationale being most of the foods that we served our babies for baby led weaning. They don't come from a package or have added salt. So occasionally if they do, we want to keep it low, but what's low, well, less than a hundred is I think a pretty good benchmark. It's pretty hard to find most foods and commercial food variety less than a hundred milligrams of sodium. So when you do jump on it, because that might work for your baby, but also keeping in mind that babies don't eat the full portion size that we as adults do. And the adult portion is the size that's listed on the nutrition, facts, panels of your food.

Katie Ferraro (2m 60s):

So let's talk about these five baby led weaning sauce, recipes that you can use to make swallowing safer. I've put together the actual recipe for you. Again, that's at BLWpodcasts.com/207, but I want to get into which five recipes are in there and how you might use them. So in case you grab this download, or you're looking at sauces, or maybe you are inspired to make your own sauces, which some of you guys are adventurous and do that. Or if you've never made a sauce before, I want to let you know how easy it is to do all right. So I've got five recipes and I'm going to go in the order that they are in the download. The first one is called Japanese Sesame sauce, also known as Goma Dare.

Katie Ferraro (3m 43s):

So Goma means Sesame in Japanese. Katelynn is one of the dietitians who helps us out here. If you follow me on Instagram at baby led weaning team, you've probably seen Katelynn's nieces and nephews because in the past two years, she'd done a hundred FIRST FOODS, four different times with them. So not only is she a dietitian, but she is like a hundred FIRST FOODS savant. At this point, she actually helped me design the original a hundred FIRST FOODS program back in 2016. So Katelynn's been with us for a while, and this is a recipe that's adapted from her mom's Goma Dare recipe. So we did some variations to this recipe, like soy sauce. That's, you know, really high in salt. So we substituted. What's called coconut aminos. I share on the download, like where you can get these in.

Katie Ferraro (4m 24s):

I don't like to put a lot of weirdo ingredients and I'm not calling you a weirdo if you use coconut aminos all the time, but it's like probably not something you're as apt to have in your pantry, as you would for let's say soy sauce, but I kind of explaining the rationale and then how we got the sodium down in each of these sauces to less than a hundred milligrams. And for those of you that don't care about numbers. You're like, I'll just make the recipe the way it is. But trust that part of the serving that we listed, it's less than a hundred milligrams. So this is a wonderful sauce for a couple of reasons. First of all, it's a way to introduce your baby to Sesame, right? Sesame is one of the big nine allergenic foods is actually the newest allergenic food. And you can use this sauce to accompany things like noodles or fish or soups, Goma Dare traditionally used with shabu shabu, which is like thinly sliced meat cooked along with vegetables.

Katie Ferraro (5m 7s):

I do not recommend serving your baby solid strips of steak. I have lots of other content throughout the podcast and my other resources about how we can make beef safe for babies, but it's not with cuts of steak. So if you are making other safer cuts of meat for your baby, you might try using this Goma Dare recipe. Also a great way to introduce your baby again, to that potentially allergenic food Sesame. The next sauce that I'm including for you guys is a low sodium marinara sauce. Now, sometimes you can find low sodium marinara sauce, but then they have a ton of added sugar in them. Or sometimes you can find the low sugar ones, but they have a ton of salt. It's actually so easy to make a delicious, low sodium marinara sauce.

Katie Ferraro (5m 48s):

And it's very, very affordable. So I love this particular recipe because like I'm not Italian, but every time I make this recipe, like, feel like I am my kids. Like it smells so good. I love this recipe because the tomatoes really stand out. There's this nice garlic flavor to it. That adds a little bit of Tang. And you know, babies do not need to eat bland food, but they also don't need like super high salt, high sugar, canned marinara sauce. So tomatoes of course contain vitamin C, vitamin C is important because it helps your baby absorb iron from the other foods you're feeding. And if you're using pasta, which is a great way to introduce your baby to that potentially allergenic food. Usually when we start, we just do the single food on its own a few times to make sure baby can tolerate the wheat, et cetera, as the potentially allergenic food.

Katie Ferraro (6m 32s):

But then you're like, okay, I'm tired of, you know, playing pasta. I'm looking at some marinara, especially if the rest of the family is going to eat it. This is a low sodium marinara sauce that your whole family will love. The third recipe in this handout that I have for you guys is chimichurri sauce. Okay? Chimichurri is a staple of Argentinian cuisine. It's, there's lots of different chimichurri variations. The one I love has parsley and basil, but I have a friend from Argentina who told me like, it's complete bastardization of chimichurri and you shouldn't have both. And people get like really passionate about what should and shouldn't go in chimichurri summer pro cilantro, others are not traditionally chimichurri is used to accompany grilled meats, but it also makes like a great condiment for other dishes like pasta.

Katie Ferraro (7m 15s):

You can always add salt after for yourself or Chili's or jalapenos if you want to make it spicier. But I think you'll love this sauce. It's also very high in fat. Remember we want fat, fat is very important for babies and they're still developing brains. The fourth recipe I have for you guys in the low sodium sauce handout or feeding guide is an aioli sauce. Now I love aioli, but it tends to be really, really, really high in salt. So easy to make. Okay. It's at its core. It's a combination of garlic and oil. There's some versions that have egg yolk or mayonnaise. This one does actually use mayonnaise. Mayonnaise can contain egg and usually soy as well. Both of which are big eight allergenic foods. So you want to make sure your baby's been exposed to both of those on their own without an, any reaction before you would try this recipe.

Katie Ferraro (8m 0s):

If it's like the first time your baby's having some of those allergenic foods, you can use it as a dipping sauce. I do it a lot with, for proteins like chicken or fish, again, as with all the recipes, you can always add more salt after if you want to. But I think if you're interested in tasting the foods, not the salt, I'm married to a man who just like salts, everything that I make before he even eats it. And I'm like, how do you even know if it's not gonna have enough salt? And he's like, I know how you cook. And I know it doesn't have enough salt for me. So a lot of adults may want to add salt to these. After you portion out your baby's part or some of you will make these in the portion. It, so you have sauces to make the food softer and safer for your baby to eat. And then the last recipe that I'm giving you guys is a low sodium peanut satay sauce.

Katie Ferraro (8m 41s):

Peanuts are a legume They're one of the big eight allergenic foods. Peanuts are not all against that is. And we want to introduce babies to peanuts early and often to help prevent food allergy down the road. But you're likely aware that the gloves have nut butter or Intacct not safe for early eaters. They can actually be a choking hazard. So you can thin out those nut butters, making them safer for babies, which is what I did in this peanut satay recipe. So peanut satay sauce usually served alongside chicken in Thai food culture. When we're doing chicken, we like to offer the darker cuts of meat, right? The fattier ones, the legs, the wings, the thighs, as opposed to chicken breast, which can be really dry. So the fat and the moisture on the legs, the wings, the thighs, those dark cuts of chicken.

Katie Ferraro (9m 22s):

They work to reduce choking risk for your baby. And then you can add the sauce on top of it, kind of a unique way to introduce your baby to peanut protein as well. If you haven't done that one. So just kind of a quick episode for you. I'd love to share these five low sodium sauce recipes with you. Don't forget. We don't serve babies, dry food, adding low sodium dippers toppers sauces is a great way to help make the baby-led weaning foods. You're preparing even safer for your early eater to download these recipes. One more time head to BLWpodcast.com/207. And then if you make any of the recipes, tag me in your pictures @babyledweanteam, I love to see like the sauce makers in action in the kitchen and love to see your little babies enjoying their foods safely with these low sodium sauces.