Meat: How to Prepare Meat Safely for Baby-Led Weaning

Katie Ferraro (0s):

So it's the moist heat cooking methods, things like braising and stewing that use liquid or steam to transfer heat. It breaks down the meat fibers, making it softer and safer for babies to feed themselves doing Baby-Led Weaning, literally like think of the pot roast consistency. That's perfect for Baby-Led Weaning. 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.

Katie Ferraro (49s):

Welcome back to another episode of the Baby-Led Weaning Made Easy podcast. I'm your host, Katie Ferraro. I'm a registered dietitian and mom of seven specializing in Baby-Led Weaning. And today's episode is all about meat. How do you prepare meat safely forBaby-Led Weaning? I know meat is scary to some of you. If you're not a big meat eater, please don't tune out. If you're not opposed to serving your baby meat, you're gonna want to hear some of these tips for making it safe and easy to feed your baby meat. That's the point of the podcast. Let's make this easy. Let's not over-complicate things, but we do need to do so safely. So the way I pick the episode topics in case you were curious was my team. And I sat down and looked at all of the most frequently asked questions that we get from the workshops from our trainings from talks on Instagram, in comments, in DM.

Katie Ferraro (1m 37s):

And there are a few themes that emerge. And that was part of what drove the topics for at least the first 20 podcasts and meat is definitely up there. Parents are anxious about serving their baby meat, cause they're like, okay, I'm down with like the soft fruits and vegetables. You know, once you do a few of those, that's pretty easy, but your baby can't just eat fruits and vegetables. Cause there's no iron in there. There's no fat in there. There's no protein in there. And most parents realize, oh, I'm going to have to eventually do meat. Well, I'll just wait a long time and do it later when the baby's older, but know that around the six month mark where your baby needs to start getting iron from outside sources and meat is a wonderful option to feed babies because it contains iron.

Katie Ferraro (2m 18s):

And the iron that you find in meats is actually very easily absorbed by the human body. So there are ways you can ensure your baby gets enough iron if you don't eat meat. But this episode is for parents who are interested in feeding their baby meat for the opportunity to offer a very easily absorbable form of iron from food, not from supplements is what I'm implying. There is nothing wrong with supplements. If that's the route you decide to go, however, I'm a firm believer of a food first approach to starting solid foods and that your baby can meet the majority of their needs from foods plus breast milk and formula. And you should not need to supplement for most typical healthy babies. Now, in addition to the iron thing, which meat definitely provides, we need to think about the texture experience that meat affords our babies as well.

Katie Ferraro (3m 4s):

So there's a number of different nutritional benefits of doing meat. If your family eats meat again, even if you're vegetarian, my tip of the day is I want to challenge you guys to offer your baby one new meat a week. There's a couple of reasons for that first. You're getting it. Habit of offering this iron rich unique textured food to your baby early on. They are not eating very much of anything, including meat, but when you get in the habit of offering one new meat a week, you'll then be working a good variety of high iron foods into your baby's repertoire that you can then cycle back. Cause remember we need to keep continually feeding these foods early and often and you'll know, oh my baby can eat pork.

Katie Ferraro (3m 46s):

My baby can eat lamb. My baby can eat chicken. And again, if you're freaked out about meat, hang tight, I'm going to give you very practical tips of how you can prepare meat for your baby. In today's episode. Now parents are scared of meat. I know this. We hear all of these messages as adults, right? Like to shift to a diet. That's more plant-based with less reliance on animal food. And I agree, yes. As a dietitian for adults, we should not be loading up on high saturated animal foods. However, when a baby is learning how to eat, I'm not concerned about, about their saturated fat intake. What I want is the opportunity for the baby to have the greatest potential to eat the widest variety of foods and flavors and tastes and textures because the research shows us that those babies who are exposed to the greatest variety of foods and flavors and tastes and textures early and often, that's what helps raise an independent eater.

Katie Ferraro (4m 36s):

And that's what helps prevent picky eating. So meat is an important category, but I know it's scary. Okay. Meat is unique because it does contain iron it's easily absorbed. It's got an interesting flavor profile, different tastes, a new experience for your baby, but it's hard for us as parents sometimes to wrap our heads around how to safely feed meat. So we're going to cover that today. I mentioned earlier, meat's important because as much as I love fruits and vegetables as the next mom, dietitian, et cetera, they don't cut it as far as the nutrient needs go. Because remember your baby at around six months of age is starting to lose the iron stores that he got from mom at the tail end of pregnancy. So that six month mark lines up nicely and corresponds with the time when your baby needs to start solid food.

Katie Ferraro (5m 21s):

So meat is theoretically a weaning food. You can feed your baby if you do so safely. Now, what means eats? Can my baby eat? Your baby can eat beef. Your baby can eat lamb. Your baby can eat pork. Baby can eat chicken, you name a meat. You can make it safe for your baby to eat. Now, there are a few caveats you're perhaps likely aware that any food, if prepared or offered in an unsafe manner can be a choking hazard, but we don't make a blanket statement. Say meat makes babies choke. That's not true. The research shows us that babies who start solid foods using Baby-Led Weaning they're at no higher risk of choking than our babies who are traditionally spoonfed provided that the parents and caregivers are educated about reducing choking risk.

Katie Ferraro (6m 4s):

So when it comes to meat, let's focus on how we can reduce choking risk. First of all, we don't feed dry meats to babies, dry meats, dry, anything, dry bread, strike crackers, dry meats. These are choking hazards. We need to make the meat moist. If you understand that we need to make the meat moist. Then when you go to the store, the second thing is we need to fattier cuts of meat. Fat equals moisture in cooking. The moisture equals additional saliva, reduced choking risk. So stick to the fattier cuts of meat, probably counterintuitive to what you've been doing. If you're trying to reduce your saturated fat intake, but let's say you're choosing chicken, do chicken legs and wings and thighs. Those are the darker cuts of meat.

Katie Ferraro (6m 46s):

Those are the ones that are going to have more of the, that throughout the meat that when you cook, it will add additional moisture, which will help lower choking risks. So stay away from Turkey breast, and chicken breast, because those are almost essentially fat-free. I don't care how good you are at cooking. It is really hard to make a chicken breast or a Turkey breast taste moist, or to do so without a lot of salt. And we don't add sodium to baby's food. So we need to rely on the fat when we're selecting our meats. And then when we prepare the meat and serve it to the baby, we want there to be moisture. So add sauces, add low sodium broth, add seasoned waters or soups or stews again, focusing on minimizing sodium, but also acknowledging that babies can't eat dry chunks of meat.

Katie Ferraro (7m 28s):

So personally, I do not offer baby strips of steak. So think about like, you have a filet and you grill it on the grill and then you slice off a piece and hand it to the baby. I don't do that until the baby is way older. Oftentimes after 10 months of age, when they have teeth and sometimes I'll even wait until one because a solid strip of meat like that, that's not the safe form of meat in which we feed babies. We want babies to have meat. That's shreddable strips of meat. So we generally recommend cooking it low and slow. And I'll talk about food preparation in a second for meat. Another thing we don't do is I do not offer chicken bones to babies until they have one or more teeth. First of all, it's as proficient as your baby is using those strong gums before they have their teeth.

Katie Ferraro (8m 12s):

It is very challenging and frustrating for a baby who can't get the meat off the bone because they don't have any teeth. Yet. The same thing goes with corn on the cob. I don't do corn on the cob until the baby has teeth. Okay, you can get chicken leg meat and shred it for your baby. Put it in. You know, however you prepare it. If you can take the juice or the sauce, or a low sodium broth and serve it along with that. But that leg meat, you know, is very high in fat. So it's going to be very, and that's good for babies. You always want to, as you have older babies and your comfortable doing the chicken on the bone spot, check for bones, and then also make sure you remove the skin because that's very challenging for the babies to eat as well. A couple of other meat tips, rotisserie chicken, parents ask us about that a lot more often than not.

Katie Ferraro (8m 56s):

Chicken has a significantly more sodium added to it than is appropriate for babies. It's actually quite easy to roast your own chicken. I hear you feel you rolling your eyes. Those of you who don't cook that much, I'm not going to go roast a whole chicken. Seriously. Once you roast your first chicken and you're like, why am, why am I not roasting chickens every day? It's so good. It's so easy. But I hate how sometimes now our whole raw chicken costs more than a rotisserie chicken. That's already cooked for you. Rotisserie chicken. Again, steer clear because it's generally too high in sodium. Except if you guys have a whole foods market, whole foods has a naked rotisserie chicken that doesn't have added sodium. Some other specialty grocers will have that as well. Blows my mind that one always costs more than the super salty one. There's less stuff in it.

Katie Ferraro (9m 36s):

If you think about it, but anyway, you can sometimes find lower sodium, but a lot of times your prepared meats that have marinades, they're just packed with salt. That's not appropriate for babies because we don't want them to be accustomed to tasting the salt and being accustomed to salty foods. Also because down the road, salty foods tend to be less helpful for babies. So let's talk a little bit about how we prepare the meat. Okay. I remember when I started in nutrition school, I went to Texas Christian University for a coordinated program in nutrition. My mom is a dietitian. So I grew up in San Diego, but I got interested in nutrition because my mom was a dietitian. I saw that she had her own nutrition practice. She ran her own business. She was able to spend time with us, six kids, but also get a break from us and run her own business.

Katie Ferraro (10m 18s):

And I always loved nutrition. And when I went to college, they said, you can go for four years and you can't go for any longer. So you better figure out what you want to do. So I said, okay, I'll do nutrition. So I went to TCU with the goal of getting into their coordinator program in nutrition. And that basically means if you're studying to be a dietitian, you have to do at the time, it was 900 hours of supervised practice. So an internship and at TCU, they had a program where my junior and senior year I could combine the internship with my study. So basically the day I graduated, I could be a dietitian. So I remember like busting my tail to get perfect grades. So I would be qualified to be in the coordinated program. And one of the first nutrition classes I took was food preparation. And I remember the first day of class being like, oh, I know how to cook.

Katie Ferraro (11m 2s):

I'm fine. When you find in this class and the instructor went through all the different types of cookery, there's moist heat cooking, and dry heat cooking. And all these terms I had never heard of. And I was like, oh, maybe this is going to be a little bit harder for, because I actually have to study the art of cooking. But I remember learning about moist heat cooking methods and moist heat cooking methods to use liquid or steam to transfer heat and cook the meat or whatever the food is. So to this day, I kind of think about my first day in food prep class, learning about moist heat cooking methods. So if this is the first time you're hearing about this, some of the methods that you want to look for that work well for cooking meat for babies are the moist heat cooking methods, right? We don't want to just dry cook it, meaning like fry a steak and then give it to a baby.

Katie Ferraro (11m 43s):

It doesn't work like that or do it on the grill and give it to a baby. Those are examples of dry heat cookery with moist heat. We do things like braising, the meat or stewing the meat low and slow is a way to break down the meat fibers to make it nice and tender so that your baby who does not have any teeth and is just learning how to eat, can manipulate, move that food around, chew a little bit of it. They might swallow some of it off the bat, but we're not offering like a steak to a six month old baby. Right? So I want you to think of the texture of kind of like a pot roast or carnitas. A lot of you guys are Chipotle fans, the carnitas at Chipola if they weren't. So it's relatively low in sodium actually compared to other fast casual restaurant change, but still it's pretty high in salt intake, but the strips of meat that are super high in fat, carnitas, that's a good texture for Baby-Led Weaning.

Katie Ferraro (12m 33s):

You can add sauces to this low sodium broth or even just seasoned water. You could always add the sodium back in or the salty condiments for yourself for the rest of the family later. Okay. So focus on the moist cookery methods, literally any type of meat you can make in an instant pot or a crock pot, or even if you don't have one of those low and slow on a stove top with a good amount of liquid, I serve the meat, the strips of the meat, again about the size of an adult's pinky finger should be shreddable easily shredded by a fork or your fingers put the juice in the bowl with the baby that don't put the baby in the bowl. You know what I'm saying? Put the juice with the meat in the bowl. The bowls that I like to use for Baby-Led Weaning are the EZPZ bowl. So I use the tiny bowls and they're mini bowl for trialing new foods and the bowls are nice because they catch that liquid as well.

Katie Ferraro (13m 20s):

We don't serve foods to baby, right off the tray or the table. If you go to the show notes for this episode at blwpodcast.com/19 on linked to the EZPZ bowls that I use for Baby-Led Weaning. And if you use the code Katie10 at ezpzfun.com, you can get 10% off of the gear there. So again, that's at blw podcast.com and I'll link to the tiny bowl and the mini bowl, which are two bowls I use when I'm serving meat to the baby, because there should be juice or moisture in there as well. Now, what if you're like, whoa, I'm not going to be doing roast leg of lamb right off the bat.

Katie Ferraro (14m 3s):

Lamb is actually one of the first meats I feed the baby just because it sometimes seems daunting. But if you, you can make a boneless leg of lamb, very nicely in a slow cooker. That's nice and soft and spreadable and has a lot of juice. You can make it low sodium, serve it to the baby. Again, they don't eat much the first week, but you're in the habit then of feeding your baby. You can always puree meat too. I want you guys to remember that if you have a meat, you can add breast milk or formula water. It's kind of gross. Like pureed meat is one of the grossest looking things in the world. I think it looks like cat food, but if you go back to episode number five, I talked to you all about how to do my purees for a few days, approach to starting solids with Baby-Led Weaning, puree your meat. If you want to just do not spoon that meat into the baby's mouth.

Katie Ferraro (14m 46s):

Okay? Do the preloaded spoon technique. I teach you about that in episode five. Again, that's called purees a few days, but you preload this spoon. You offer the spoon to the baby, help assist the baby. At the beginning. If you need to, to sell feed, the baby starts learning how to dip and scoop. Do you need to be using a Baby-Led Weaning spoon, the spoon I like for doing purees again, I'm not putting that spoon in the baby's mouth. You can honor the principles of Baby-Led Weaning with purees and spoons. If you're pre-loading the spoon for the baby at the beginning and allowing the baby to self feed, the spoons I like are the tiny spoons from EZPZ. Again, ezpzfun.com. Katie10 gets you 10% off and I'll link to those spoons as well.

Katie Ferraro (15m 26s):

Okay? Take the same meat. Make a thin puree, make a thicker puree and then offer your baby the soft strips of that meat. You can do that. The first week of Baby-Led Weaning, even in the first feeding. Okay? Again, keeping in mind the baby won't eat much, but practice makes perfect. And we want to get the baby a lot of opportunity to learn how to eat a variety of foods, including meats. Once you get past pureed meat which, you don't have to do, but some parents do just to feel safe. Use ground meat. I like to call that your gateway meat, like anybody can make a hamburger. I don't care how bad you are at cooking. You can buy ground beef by the fattier cut like by the 80-20 right? 80% lean, 20% fat. Don't go by that 97% fat free stuff.

Katie Ferraro (16m 7s):

It's good for your heart, but it's bad for your baby in the sense that it doesn't have enough fat to equate to enough moisture. So we want the baby to have those fattier cuts of meat. Get the old fashioned 80-20, all right, make a burger, make sure it's cooked all the way through no pink in the middle, right? Because we want to kill any potential pathogens. If you're making a hamburger, let's say you fry it on both sides. And then when that hamburger is cooled a little bit, then you can cut it into strips and serve those strips to the baby. Just put them in the EZPZ bowl, allow the baby to scoop or rake up the strips of meat that are about the size of a french fry or your pinky finger.

Katie Ferraro (16m 48s):

And then the baby will suck on it. They love hamburger meat. Whenever you're cooking beef products, especially ground meat products. You want to make sure that the internal temperature is 160 degrees. Okay. You and I might love a burger. That's blood dripping rare, raw in the middle, but that's actually not safe. Okay. If you think about if there's any potential pathogens on the outside of a piece of beef, and then it gets ground up, those pathogens from the outside are then transferred to the middle of the ground meat product. If you don't cook it all the way through to 160, then there is the potential for the pathogens to cause harm. So again, 160 is the internal cook temp and you cannot eyeball if it's done or not, you need to have a meat thermometer. So I think having a meat thermometer is an important tool when you're doing Baby-Led Weaning, go ahead and start with burgers.

Katie Ferraro (17m 32s):

If you want as your first gateway meat, but don't get stuck there, do different ones. Now another tip that I have for me is to involve your partner in meat prep. I don't make a lot of meat because I'm cheap and vegetables are a lot cheaper. We eat a lot of plant-based protein in my house, but whenever I'm feeding babies, we do more meat. I remember my sister is the same and she has, I have seven kids. My sister has six. So we're, we're the oldest two of we have six siblings. There's six of us total. So there's 13 kids between me and my sister. And they're all very close in age, took a number of sets of multiples. So we've we were doing Baby-Led Weaning all at the same time. And I remember before that, my sister is also very frugal when it comes to cooking. Yeah. And her husband said to her honey, are we poor?

Katie Ferraro (18m 14s):

Because we never eat meat. And my sister was like, yeah, meat's expensive. It is a little bit more on the expensive side. I'm not inclined to cook very much meat because I'm cheap. It's also kind of a hassle sometimes. And so whenever I'm doing Baby-Led Weaning, I always ask my husband who is from Texas. Who's not always super interested in what our babies are. Eating are certainly not to the degree that I am be like, Hey, the babies need to eat pork this week. It's on my list of the 100 First Foods that we're doing. I bought this pork shoulder and I'm, I mean, I could figure out what to do with it, but I'm busy with five other kids. So could you please make this pork roast? Here's my parameters. It needs to have moisture and you're not allowed to put a lot of salt in it.

Katie Ferraro (18m 55s):

Okay. Figure out a way to make, I need like a soupy meat product. That's in shreddable strips at the end of it. And my husband who doesn't even like cooking usually will come through now. I don't want to make like gender stereotypes. But if you ask a lot of moms, if you have a male female household, sometimes they'll say, oh, the dad makes the meat. Of course, moms are very proficient at making meat as well. Anyone can make meat, but if you're not a big meat person, is there someone else who can make the meat for you? I know I've also done this with my dad. My dad is like, semi-retired he loves to feel needed. I'm like, dad, man, I got this like boneless leg of lamb. I don't know what to do with it, but I got to make it for the babies. Can you, can you figure something out? Okay. I'll put something together for you. So you can ask or engage a partner in meet and start certain people. If you got meat lovers in your tribe, they get really stoked when the baby eats meat, especially if it's a meat that they made.

Katie Ferraro (19m 41s):

Okay. But you got to set the parameters. It has to be soft. It has to be shreddable. It has to have some moisture and liquid with it. Okay. And then make a lot of it and freeze it if you're not into making meat. So got a grocery store challenge for you guys to close out today's episode. If you are freaked out by me and feeding your baby meat, go to the store, talk to the butcher or the meat department. If you have real people that work at your store, buy a chunk of meat that you don't recognize that you don't usually cook a good one. If you're not a big meat cooker, find a boneless leg of lamb. Look for marbling. Okay. Marbling is where the fat is. There's lots of white streaks throughout the meat. That's fat. That's good. When it cooks, it will be moist for the baby. Okay? Cook that meat. Look up. Recipes, take whatever recipe you find on how to make boneless leg of lamb and take the salt out.

Katie Ferraro (20m 25s):

If it says cook and broth by low sodium broth or substitute with seasoned water that you can have the salt back in later, just make it low sodium for your baby. Okay. Serve it with a lot of liquid. Don't stress out that your baby's not eating that much of it early on. And if you're scared about choking, I know I'm always giving you the same recommendation, but maybe you're jumping into this podcast episode and you haven't heard other ones, please be sure that you take a refresher infant CPR course before you start solid foods with your baby. Okay? I'm not implying that your baby is at any higher risk to choke on meats. They will certainly gag a lot more. Meat is a challenging texture, but remember gagging is a natural and necessary part of learning how to eat. And if you're still on the fence about gagging, please go back and listen to episode number four, which is gagging versus choking.

Katie Ferraro (21m 7s):

What is the difference? So that you're comfortable with gagging because your baby will gag a little bit more with meat, but do you know what? That's a sign that they're practicing, learning how to get comfortable with that texture. So good for you for having the courage to feed your baby meat. I'll go ahead and link up some of those resources that I mentioned in today's episode on the show notes for this episode, if you go to blw podcast.com/nineteen, and if you need some ideas of meats to feed your baby, grab my 100 First Food list. There is, there are 20 protein foods on that list. Many of which are meats. I give away the 100 First Food list to everybody on my free workshop, which is called Baby-Led Weaning for Beginners how to get your baby to try 100 foods before turning one, without you having to spoonfeed periods or buy pouches again, you can sign up for that workshop by going to the show notes for this episode, BLWpodcast.com/19, or follow me on Instagram at baby led wean team.

Katie Ferraro (22m 3s):

I've got lots of content and lots of videos of babies, eating meat. Seeing is believing, right? Just like watching videos of babies, gagging and getting over their gags and recovering on their own helps you be confident in your baby's ability to do the same. Same thing goes for me. You see other babies eating meat. You're like I can make a pork shoulder with a lot of fat in it, moist and put it in a bowl for my baby and your baby can eat that. And they might not be super proficient at it early on, but give them a few weeks and you'll have a meat eating machine on your hands. If that's what you're into. All right, we will talk about plant-based sources of iron on this podcast as well. So there's something for you non-meat eaters coming up, but there you have it. That's how to prepare meat safely for Baby-Led Weaning. Thanks for listening. Bye now!