Feeding Nourished Babies Series :: Pastured Chicken

 

(THIS is a good place to start if you are new to the Feeding Nourished Babies Series!)

One of the questions I get so often about the more traditional/WAPF way of starting food with babies is: How am I supposed to fill baby up without baby cereals? You can read HERE about why baby cereals are not a great choice for baby.

There are just so many things besides cereal that baby can have though! Babies love nourishing fats to their brains from pastured egg yolks, avocados, and coconut butter! And there are so many great veggies they can try that are easier to digest like peas, carrots, green beans, and squashes!

Chicken was one of those foods I was hesitant to try because it just didn’t look pretty. Much to my amazement however, all 3 of my girls now just devoured chicken pureed with bone broth. My first born made some faces at the texture at first (probably because I waited so long to try it), and after a week ate it without a flinch. My second and now third babies inhaled chicken!

The nutrient profile of chicken meat from birds that have been on pasture (eating bugs and grass!) and raised properly is amazing! If you are unsure if you have access to pastured chickens, try asking around at your farmer’s markets for farmers that raise their chickens on pasture. Ask them what sort of feed they supplement with. Let them know you are looking for non GMO feed, and soy free. You can try looking on FarmersPal for your area, or even THIS site where you can look up raw milk farmers – sometimes those farmers also provide pastured meats as well.

Cooking your chicken is super easy – into the crockpot over night or all day. You can either make up the whole bird as baby food to store in your freezer, or just a portion. I am in a routine of roasting or crockpotting a chicken almost every week, so I haven’t been making huge batches of chicken this time around. With my first and second babies however, I would crock a whole chicken just for baby food storage – it would last quite a while as you can imagine, which was nice! I highly recommend pureeing the chicken in bone broth versus water for added protein and nutrients from the gelatin in the broth. You can make your bone broth right from the chicken bones you pulled the meat off!

I like freezing my chicken purees in ice cube trays. Once they are frozen, I pop out the chicken cubes and store them in freezer bags. They thaw fast this way so I can just take a few chicken cubes out before we sit down to dinner and baby can eat right along with us!

Tips:

• Use the dark and white meat! I have had to get myself used to the flavor and texture of dark meat over time. I didn’t want my girls to have to do that! They never bat an eye whether there is dark meat on their plate or if it is white. Makes for easy dinners.
• Add a pinch of sea salt to baby’s chicken puree! Babies need minerals too!
• Watch baby for a week during those first introductions of the chicken. If you see any weird diaper action going on, redness around the mouth, or rashes on the skin, you will want to stop – this is the same with any first foods introductions. Try the chicken again in a month and see what happens.
• It can take up to 15 attempts of a new food for baby to accept the new food! This is the same for all first foods! If baby makes a funny face at first, don’t give up! They are getting used to new tastes, textures, and feelings in their mouth! Give them a chance to learn how this feels, how to use their tongue, etc.
• THIS is a great first foods chart to give you an idea of what to follow when choosing first foods for your baby if you are wanting to follow the WAPF guidelines for feeding babies.
• Read THIS for common FAQ’s and thoughts to keep in mind about feeding babies.

Keep me posted on how the baby feeding goes!