Katie Ferraro (1s):

Now, when I say ground meat, what sort of meats are we talking about? A lot of people think ground beef. Yes, Babies can eat ground beef, but they can also eat ground poultry, like ground chicken or ground Turkey, ground pork, ground lamb. Hey there, I am 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. Hey guys, welcome back today. We're talking about ground meat and How to Safely Offer Ground Meat for Babies.

Katie Ferraro (43s):

I like to think of ground meat, kind of as the gateway meat for parents who might be a little freaked out about offering the soft, solid strips of meat, that babies who are six months of age and beyond can safely eat. So if you're not like totally there with the strips yet I get it. Ground meat, the bridge that can maybe help you get there. Now, when I say ground meat, what sort of meats are we talking about? A lot of people think ground beef, yes, babies can eat ground beef, but they can also eat ground poultry like ground chicken or ground turkey, ground pork ground lamb. Sure. There's lots of other meats that you can grind. Just thinking of the big ones that come to mind right away. Let's talk about ground beef and selecting ground beef with all ground meat. So we actually want to do, it's not just limited to beef is stay away from the extra lean.

Katie Ferraro (1m 24s):

So extra lean means the least amount of fat. Okay. And fat is your friend when you're doing baby led weaning, right? That is important for your baby's still developing brain, but fat is even more important because it adds moisture and it lubricates the protein in the meat, which in turn makes it safer for your baby to swallow. So when you're selecting cuts of meat, it's a good idea to select the fattier cuts of meat. So yeah, there might be some saturated fat in there, and nobody cares about that for your baby. Right now, we're concerned about safety. So don't get bogged down in the numbers from like the nutrition standpoint, but do try to look at the fat content so that you're doing the fattier cuts. If you want some more tips on like what cuts of meat to choose in episode 177, I talked about red meat.

Katie Ferraro (2m 6s):

Your baby can eat. And an episode 178, I did white meat. Your baby can safely eat. And those episodes kind of break down the different cuts of meat. I'm not sure how long you've been listening, but episode 176 was also super cool. We were doing this during meat week, which we always do at the end of the year, kind of in November, right before Thanksgiving, because eating meat at Thanksgiving can be really intimidating to families because it's maybe the first time your baby's eating around like other family members that aren't you. So in meat week, we had Cara Nicoletti on the podcast. So she's a fourth generation butcher. That was episode 176. And it was called BLW at the butcher identifying ideal cuts of meat for babies. So there was some ground meat stuff in those episodes, but just kind of more cuts of meat outside of ground meat in those as well.

Katie Ferraro (2m 48s):

So back to ground beef, choose the fattier cuts of meat. When it comes to ground Turkey, stay away from the extra lean cuts of ground Turkey and ground chicken as well, just the breasts, which can be really, really dry. And we don't want dry foods for babies, right? Cause that can be a choking hazard. So with ground Turkey, for example, the fattier cut actually has the darker cuts of meat, but also some of the skin ground up in it, which is totally safe for babies to eat. When we're talking about safety, it's also important to note that all ground meats should be cooked to an internal cooking temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit. That's in order to ensure that you've killed any potential pathogens, that might've worked their way into the middle of that burger patty or whatever you're making and could potentially be harmful to your baby.

Katie Ferraro (3m 30s):

So again, get that meat thermometer out cause you can't eyeball whether or not ground meats are done, needs to be at one 60 pink ground lamb and ground pork also work for baby. So when we're talking about ground meat and the suggestions that I'll make, you can really interchange any of the different ground meats that you encounter at your grocery store or your butcher. If you're fortunate enough to have one. So how do we use ground meat for baby-led weaning? If you're starting this out early and baby led weaning, we do not make a bunch of fancy recipes with combination foods. Hey, in my approach to baby led weaning that I teach inside of my programs for the first eight weeks, which we call phase one of baby led weaning. So generally for babies who are six and seven months of age or whatever the first eight weeks are when you're starting baby-led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (4m 11s):

If you're getting a little bit of a later start, just feed single solitary foods, don't get fancy with different combination foods or fancy recipes. And one of the easiest ways to do ground beef for babies is to make a BLW burger strip or burger strips for your baby. What I do with that good old fashioned baby burger, I make a hamburger, I cut it into strips about the size of my adult pinky finger. And I serve it to baby. Now parents are like, what do you mean by make-up burger? Okay. Lots of different ways to make a hamburger, right? If you're my brother, he puts Lowery seasoned salt and soy sauce. And it's so good, but we don't add salt and salt for babies, right? So start with the basic burger. Now, if your baby's already had egg, it makes it a little bit easier.

Katie Ferraro (4m 51s):

So sometimes I put egg as the first allergenic food and then do beef after that or whatever you want. We want to work through. All of the foods have a whole hundred FIRST FOODS list that includes the nine allergenic foods. And we offer five new foods a week. So you have a lot of leverage in which foods you offer before or after ones. So let's say you did egg on its own a number of times to make sure there was no reaction, putting some egg in your baby burger is really going to help everything kind of stick together so that when it cooks, you then can cut it into strips that the baby can pick up with their hands and self feed. Now, other families like to put breadcrumbs in their burger to help hold things together. And that's fine. If your baby is already had wheat, a number of times without reaction, feel free to do that in your burger.

Katie Ferraro (5m 30s):

Okay. But if it's like the third food, if your baby's had avocado banana, and now you're trying to do beef, that's a little bit hard because we don't serve up ground beef crumbles to your baby. For two reasons, if it was crumbled really, really small, your baby can't pick it up because at six and seven months of age babies don't have their pincer grasp. And so what parents think is we'll all just put it on a spoon and push it into the baby's mouth. Well, no, we don't want to do that either. We want longer strips of food for baby-led weaning about the size of your adult pinky finger and because ground meat on its own can't stick together like that. It's a good idea to have at least one other ingredient, like an egg that can kind of help things stick it together. So baby-led weaning ground beef or ground meat burger strips were great. I think it does a little bit better.

Katie Ferraro (6m 11s):

If you've already introduced your baby to egg, maybe you need that kick in the pants or that fire under your, you know what to get your baby tries. Some allergenic foods do egg first, and then you can make some really easy burgers. What about other foods that we can make out of ground meat products? Sometimes parents ask about meatballs, okay. Meatballs are kind of like burger. Some families put lots of stuff in it. Some don't put stuff in the meatballs that you would buy at the grocery store, commercial meatballs and from the frozen section way, way too much sodium for babies. So you can make, and I mentioned breadcrumbs earlier, if you're doing anything with breadcrumbs, you can do Japanese panko. I love panko for baby led weaning cause they're lower sodium in panko than we would get in commercial or the traditional breadcrumbs that you would buy or either make out of regular bread.

Katie Ferraro (6m 56s):

One thing I do is once, you know, my baby's been doing baby-led weaning for about eight weeks and I'm moving into combination foods. I've already had beef. We've already had pork. I have a baby-led weaning meatball recipe that has half ground beef and half ground pork. So I love combining those together for me. While the rest of my family likes it as well, a little bit more than straight ground beef meatballs and actually have a blog post with five different ground meat recipes for baby Led Weaning. I'm going to link to that on the show notes for this episode. So BLW podcast.com/223. And that'll take you to the blog post that has all of these recipes. But again, the recipes that are combination foods beyond the burger, we generally don't do until after baby's been having foods for about eight weeks.

Katie Ferraro (7m 39s):

So in phase two of baby led weaning in my programs, that's when we move into the combination foods, some of the trickier textures and you're incorporating some of these recipes. So the other recipes that I have listed on that blog post, just in case you're interested, there's a BLW meatball recipe with a low sodium marinara sauce, because if your meatballs are dry, which I don't want them to be, but if they are, you got to add a little bit of sauce, but the pasta sauce you would buy at the store generally has too much salt for babies. So that recipes in there, I also have another recipe for some Costa kebabs with Tzatziki sauce. So the cough does ground meat on a skewer. It's a great high iron food for babies. And I got this Tzatziki sauce made with Greek yogurt, got shredded cucumber in it. So a safe way to offer baby cucumber mint and lemon juice.

Katie Ferraro (8m 19s):

Again, this is a combination food that a baby would eat after having done solids for about eight weeks. So that recipes on there, and then the other ones that I have for you have a mini mushroom meatloaf recipe. This is one of my most popular baby led weaning recipes because it's hard to introduce mushrooms to babies, but you can do it in a meatloaf. I make these oftentimes in a muffin tin, which are great because you can make extras and freeze them and pop them out of the freezer. The fridge, when you don't feel like cooking meat every night, which I never do. And these are great because you can flatten them and also cut them into strips too. If your baby still doesn't have that pincer grasp. And I have also the green chili recipe for you guys too. So I'm going to link to all of these recipes that are all in the same blog posts, head to the show notes, BLWpodcast.com/223 and good luck cooking your baby ground beef.