Katie Ferraro (1s):

So the key with doing the strips of Lamb for baby Led Weaning is that you know, that it's done when you can easily shred those long strips of Lamb between your fingers. If you can shred it, then it's safe to offer your 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, leading you with the competence and knowledge. You need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (41s):

Well, hello there, meat eaters or people who want their baby to eat meat, but don't know how I know you guys, that meat can be a major pain point for parents or caregivers when their babies are just starting out on solid foods, even older babies, there's a lot of babies we see who haven't ever tried, any animal foods. And you hear that your baby can and should eat iron rich foods like animal foods, which include meat. If that's what the other people in your family do. But maybe the idea of feeding a baby meat freaks you out. You think what if my baby chokes, or maybe the idea of cooking meat grosses you out? Like, how do I know if it's done or if it's safe to offer and what cuts of meat do I even buy for babies?

Katie Ferraro (1m 21s):

Well, I am a huge fan of offering your baby one new meat a week. Protein is one of the five categories in my five step feeding framework. Every week we introduce five new foods to Baby and in my baby led weaning programs. I encourage parents and families who eat meat to offer your baby one new meat a week and do that challenge yourself to do it beginning in the first week of baby LED WEANING, or if you've already started and you haven't done meat yet, make this the first week that you start doing one new meat a week for your baby. I personally love to do Lamb on day four, have baby Led Weaning. So in today's episode, I'm going to take you on a tour of How to Safely Offer Lamb to your baby.

Katie Ferraro (2m 3s):

Now, I like to start out these mini baby led weaning training episodes with a BLW tip of the day. And today's tip is about selecting Lamb. I'm convinced that the easiest way to do Lamb for babies Safely is to do a lamb roast. I actually now skip the stew meat. I used to say, do stew meat or do roasts. But in this episode, I'm going to explain why I think lamb roasts are actually the safest way to offer lamb meat for babies who are starting baby led, weaning, and then exactly how to prepare it. So in the event that you've never made a lamb roast, which most of us maybe haven't you can do this easily and safely for your baby. Plus a ton left over that the rest of your family can enjoy. So hang tight, I'm going to be walking you through those exact steps and a couple of different ways to make lamb safe for baby Led Weaning.

Katie Ferraro (2m 49s):

Now you might be wondering why lamb what's the fixation on lamb? Well, in 2016, I created the a hundred FIRST FOODS approach to starting solid foods with baby led weaning. I was actually doing baby led weaning with my baby quadruplets. They had tried a hundred different foods by the time they turned one, I turned that whole a hundred FIRST FOODS approach into a formal method and was tweaking it over the following months. And then when the quads were 18 months old, I had another set of multiples. So Baby twins, and when my twins, Gus and Hannah hit six months, I was using my brand new Instagram account baby led weaning team to really refine the a hundred FIRST FOODS program, as well as to document Gus. Hannah's a hundred FIRST FOODS journey.

Katie Ferraro (3m 29s):

I actually started that Instagram baby led weaning team to document just that Gustin Hannah's hundred FIRST FOODS with baby Led Weaning because I didn't want to spam my main family page with too much feeding stuff. So at the beginning, my family page was my big account and my baby led weaning. One was a little test one and in a very short period of time, the baby led weaning account took off. And that became my big account. And that's where all of my content is housed now for starting solids with baby led weaning. And I think the reason why it really resonated with parents was because it took a real life look into what they be Led Weaning is, and it's not all babies smashing Lamb. It's really slow at first and maybe your baby doesn't eat and it's scary to offer meat, but here's how you can.

Katie Ferraro (4m 12s):

And here's the little wins. And from there, it just kind of snowballed. So during the first week of gusts in Hannah's first hundred FOODS, we do five new FOODS a week in my five step feeding framework. So on Monday we do a new fruit on Tuesday. We do a new vegetable on Wednesday. We do a new starch Thursday. We do a new protein food, and Friday we do a new challenge food and that's the allergenic foods and the trickier textures and the more complex flavor profile foods. So back to day four, that was going to be on Thursday. On Sunday of each week, I always sit down and plan what five new foods my babies are going to eat. And so I was looking at my hunter FIRST FOODS LIST and it was looking at the protein category. And then I was looking in my freezer and I found a frozen lamb roast probably left over from Easter, or gosh knows when, but I was like, sweet. I don't have to go to the grocery store.

Katie Ferraro (4m 53s):

So I defrosted it, made it. And that was day four of what was the original a hundred FIRST FOODS content on my Instagram. And then this idea of feeding Lamb in week one of baby led weaning kind of stuck. And now it's like this weird thing that I'm known for, you course could literally pick any meat to feed your baby. I actually do a lot of interviews on other people's podcasts. If it's about feeding, they almost inevitably will ask, like, what's up with doing Lamb in week one of baby led weaning. So it's just a little bit weird. Again, your baby can eat lots of different types of meats, but I'm going to explain why I prefer lamb. So before we get into the low down on Lamb, if you guys want to grab my hundred FIRST FOODS LIST, that's the list of a hundred different foods that your Babies can eat before they turn one there's 20 different types of protein foods, including Lamb in the protein category.

Katie Ferraro (5m 42s):

If you want to grab that a hundred FIRST FOODS LIST, I give it away to everybody on my free online workshop. That workshop is called Baby LED WEANING FOR BEGINNERS. And it's all about how to get your baby to eat 100 FOODS before turning one, without you having to spoonfeed purees or buy pouches. So if you want to sign up for this week's free workshop times, just go to baby led, weaning dot C O, add yourself to the workshop. And again, everyone in the workshop gets a copy of that hundred FIRST FOODS LIST. And you can start knocking these foods out safely with your baby tomorrow. So head over to baby led, weaning.co to sign up for the free workshop and get your hundred FIRST FOODS LIST. So now for the lowdown on Lamb, let's start with why, why do we want to feed lamb?

Katie Ferraro (6m 24s):

Okay. There's a lot of different reasons why we pick a variety of foods. If you guys have been learning about baby led weaning for any length of time, you know, that there's research that shows that babies who are exposed to the greatest number of foods and flavors and tastes and textures early and often, those are the babies who are more likely to be independent eaters and are less likely to be picky eaters. So lots of reasons for variety, we want Babies to achieve diet diversity and we'll start with nutrition, but not that it's more important than the other factors in why we choose Lamb. I'm a dietician. I like to start with the nutrients and Lamb is an iron rich food. It's got iron and it's got zinc, and those are two minerals. We require them in very small amounts in our body, but they're, super-duper important.

Katie Ferraro (7m 5s):

And babies need to start getting them from FOODS somewhere around the six month mark. So all animal foods, including meats like lamb contain iron. And we know that the type of iron that's found in animal foods is more well absorbed by the human body than the iron found in plant foods. And even though your baby, isn't actually eating a whole lot of Lamb early on, I mean, there's very minimal chewing and swallowing and digesting there actually still is some iron transfer that occurs from even just sucking on the land. So we want to get in the habit of offering high iron foods like Lamb. And I say, do it in week. One of baby Led Weaning. It's good for you to get in that habit. And it's good for your baby to be start experiencing these foods. So nutrition is the first reason why taste or flavor is the second reason why Liam is a unique new taste.

Katie Ferraro (7m 52s):

I know he's was just helping my friend Geneva, who works with us. Her baby Skyler turned six months of age. They live on a boat in San Diego. We did a whole baby led weaning on a boat series. I actually interviewed Geneva and episode 1 59. It was all about feeding your baby in small spaces. And it was baby led, weaning on a boat with Geneva Davidson. And we did Lamb on day four of baby led weaning. And then on day five, when we were doing her first allergenic food, which was milk, and we introduced that as low sodium homemade cottage cheese on milk day, she was like, I'm so sorry, but this baby just stinks like Lamb, like the very pungent smell of lamb, which some people love, but it really is a strong flavored food.

Katie Ferraro (8m 32s):

And we want our babies to be exploring different flavors. So don't be afraid to offer strong flavored foods like Lamb. Now, in addition to nutrition and the taste or flavor, Lamb is also a unique texture, right? We want Babies to be experiencing different textures early and often purees her fine. There's nothing wrong with purees. We generally do those for the first couple of days of baby LED WEANING or not at all. If you want to totally skip them. And while periods aren't important texture for babies to master, we also know that babies need to be exposed to lots of different textures and meat, especially soft stringy strips of lamb served with lots of low sodium juice or broth is a wonderful texture experience for your baby.

Katie Ferraro (9m 13s):

Now, another reason why I love to serve Lamb and in particular cooked soft strips of lamb roast is because they are the perfect size for your baby to pick up. Sometimes parents think they need to cut up food really small, and that that would make it safer for Baby to eat. That's actually not true. Cutting the food up very small, actually increases the risk of choking early on in. Self-feeding not to mention that your baby who's six months of age, doesn't have their pincer grasp yet. And so they can't even pick up the small pieces. So you've got to cut it longer. And the lamb roast makes these nice long strips of meat that are soft. And they're about the size of your adult pinky finger. So again, why do we serve lamp, nutrition, reasons, taste and flavor reasons, texture reasons, and because you can make it the perfect size for baby led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (9m 54s):

Now, when do we want to offer baby lamb starting at six months of age, plus when the baby is showing the other signs of readiness to feed, we don't want to do anything except breast milk or formula prior to six months of age, how do we serve lamb? Well, I mentioned that roast lamb is my favorite way to do Lamb. If you guys have an instant pot, okay. Or if you even have a pot with a lid on it, you can do this. I know a lot of you guys get instant pots. A lot of people register for they get it for a wedding gift or someone gives them one and it sits in the box. Say, if you have a baby and an instant pot in the box, you're gonna put the two things together. And we're going to use that instant pot to make a lamb roast. You buy a lamb roast at the store, and it is a little bit on the pricey side. It depends where you live in some food cultures.

Katie Ferraro (10m 35s):

Lamb is a food that is eaten regularly and it is not prohibitively expensive. It's a little on the pricier side where I live in San Diego. I know the other day about a three and a half pound lamb roast. And it was almost $30. I am not in the habit of buying $30 cuts of meat for my baby. However, it made like 25 servings of Lamb for the baby, and you can freeze them and use them in the future. Plus the rest of your family can enjoy them. So I think it's a good investment for a safe way to feed your baby lamb. When it comes to the lamb roast, you can choose boneless or bone in. It really doesn't matter. I just get whatever's cheaper. You need a pot, a bunch of low sodium broth. I generally do about four cups of broth. The lowest sodium one. You can find no added salt broth is the best. You could also just do seasoned water if you want.

Katie Ferraro (11m 15s):

We just avoid salt and sugar when seasoning, but go crazy with all the other different flavors, if you want, and you put it in the instant pot or the slow cooker, you cover it with all that broth and you cook it on Hi for 10 hours in the slow cooking method. You could also pressure cook it, but it kind of always pulverizes when I cook and I'm not great at pressure cooking. So I like the slow cooking method overnight. And basically you cook it until the Lamb is fork tender. That's about at somewhere between eight to 10 hours for a three and a half pound roast. I usually do 10 hours and save all the juice and all the broth. So what you do that take the big piece of meat out when it's done cooking, it should be fork tender, meaning it falls apart very with the fork, I remove the fat cap and I make sure that I can shred that cook lamb with my fingers.

Katie Ferraro (12m 0s):

That is key. We do not serve solid strips of meat that we can't tread with our fingers to Babies. That would be a huge choking hazard. So if you can shred it nicely with your fingers, you pull it into long strips about the size of your adult pinky finger. I put a few of those strips, two or three into an EzPz, suction bowl. And I put a lot of extra low sodium juice or broth on top of it. Remember, that's the juice and the moisture that's going to help reduce a choking risk. We don't want to serve any dry foods and particularly no dry protein foods to babies. Now, pro tip here, when you're doing a lamb roast, don't brown. It traditionally, if you were gonna make a lamb roast for your family, you would brown it in order to kind of sear in the flavor and get that nice kind of crunchy brown outer part.

Katie Ferraro (12m 41s):

We don't want to do that for baby led weaning because we don't serve any crunchy or crispy or hard parts of the meat. So if we just skip the Browning step, all the meat ends up being really nice and soft and we can use more of it and waste less of it. And I mentioned stew me, and I'm not a huge fan of steamy. Steamy can be very tough if you cook it perfectly, you can low inflow, make it tender. However, you can also make it tough. And so I have had some good and then some not so great experiences with stew meat because it depends on what the size of the stew meat that you're starting out with is. And if it's pre-cut and it's already smaller about the size of a golf ball or smaller, because meat, surprisingly, it's actually quite a high water content food.

Katie Ferraro (13m 23s):

When you cook it for a long period of time, if you don't have enough juice in there can actually dry the meat out and become very tough and very hard plus very small pieces that babies can't pick up. So it's certainly not my favorite way to do Lamb for babies. You could do ground lamb and a lot of families will start with that for ground lamb. I cook it the same way I do ground beef and actually have a wonderful blog post for you guys. If you want to check it out about five different recipes for how to serve ground beef for baby led weaning, and you can adapt any of those to make those safe for serving ground lamb. And I'm going to link up that blog post the five ground beef recipes for baby led weaning.

Katie Ferraro (14m 4s):

I'll put that on the show notes for this episode, which you can find at BLW podcast.com forward slash 1 6 5. So you can do a roast. You can do stew, but it's not my favorite. You can do ground lamb. You could also puree any of those, any cooked lamb. If you add some breast milk or formula or some more of that low sodium broth, get it nice and soft printed on a preloaded spoon. You can help your baby serve themselves. Feed themselves that lamb off of the spoon. We don't want to put any period FOODS on a spoon and then push it into the baby's mouth. Putting any object into the baby's mouth, including a spoon can be a choking hazard. The spoon that I like to use for baby LED WEANING FOR doing pureed lamb on the preloaded spoon is called the tiny spoon and that's from ezpz So if you go to the website, ezpzfun.com, the tiny spoon was designed by their feeding expert, Dawn Winkelman.

Katie Ferraro (14m 54s):

She's been on the podcast. A number of times, she's a speech language pathologist. She's created this beautiful spoon that works perfectly for baby led weaning with lots of developmentally appropriate features. You can get 10% off everything at ezpz, including the tiny spoons. They come in a two-pack, which is perfect, cause you load one up and then you get the second one backed up and then you kind of switch them back and forth as the baby's learning how to eat. But my affiliate discount code at easy-peasy is Katie 10 and networks for 10% off. So how do you serve the lamb to Babies? If you're doing the puree, put it on the preloaded spoon and let babies self feed. If you're doing the strips of lamb, put two or three strips of Lamb that are about the size of your adult pinky finger, serve it with lots of broth, put it into a suction bowl.

Katie Ferraro (15m 36s):

I like the tiny bowl and the mineable from easy-peasy. Those are great for trying single new foods, which you should be doing for the first few weeks of baby led weaning. Again, that code KT 10 works for 10% off at EzpZ, that tiny bowl, that mini bowl, the tiny spoons great for trialing lamb before Babies, you can also make a really thined out lamb puree and put it in the tiny cup. That's the open cup that EzPz makes it Don also designed a great way to practice those open cup skills is actually to work with a puree and babies love trying strong flavor, purees like Lamb. So there you have it, lots of ways that you can safely serve your baby lamb. If you want to check out some of the recipes or the different products that I mentioned in this episode, I'll link them up on the show notes, which you can find at BLW podcast.com forward slash 1 6 5.

Katie Ferraro (16m 25s):

And if you work up the guts to try Lamb with your baby this week, take a picture or a video tag me on Instagram at baby led weaned team. I love to see all your little lamb-loving Babies. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you next time.