It’s been a while! Today I’m just going to share some ways to preserve homemade and processed baby food like Gerber. My daughter is about to be 8 months by the end of this month and we noticed that she always gets interested in solid foods more than breast milk now. However, she just eats small portions of food most of the time.
Whenever I buy food for her, I always get the bigger package because that’s more practical. I didn’t realize that it’s so unpractical to have leftovers because it has to be thrown away. As you could see most the processed baby food can only last for 2 days when refrigerated. If you’ll check the example below, it says you can only keep it in the fridge within 48 hours.
Having that said, I decided to buy food containers to store my baby’s food. There are three questions below that we’ll answer.
1. Why do we need to know how to store our baby’s food?
- It’s practical to portion our baby’s food to avoid leftovers
- It will lessen our prep up time because all we need to do is to thaw and reheat the food
- It’s more manageable
- And it will prolong the shelf life of our baby’s food.
2. What do we need to store the food properly?
- First, we must have clean and freezer-safe containers. In my case, I use a hard plastic BPA-free container. There are several options for containers in the market. I’ll include some related items below in this post.
- If it’s going to be homemade baby food, cook and prepare it first. Let it cool down for a while to avoid getting moist in the containers. Once it has cooled down, transfer it in portions on the containers. Make sure that it is closed tightly to avoid any contamination.
- If it’s commercial baby food, just transfer it in portions on the containers and freeze it.
- If there are no tiny containers available for portioning, just put it on a freezer-safe container and make sure that it is clean and tightly closed all the time. You can scoop it like ice cream whenever you need some portions of it.
- Other moms use ice cube containers and wrap them with cling wrappers.
- You can store it the way you want it. Just make sure that your containers are clean, freezer safe, and always tightly closed.
- Do not use glass containers.
- Do not refreeze thawed portions and any leftovers.
- Add some labels for the date it was processed and what it is.
3. How long will it be preserved?
- Food that is stored in the freezer can last up to 3 to 6 mos. But of course the shorter the better.
- Food that was thawed on the fridge can only last for 48 hours.
- Any unusual refusal of the baby towards the food means that it’s no longer good.
- Any unusual smell or discoloration of food may need to be disposed of.
So there you go! It’s very simple and safe to freeze out some food for your baby. It saves time and easier to prepare.
Upon checking Cerelac or any instant baby food formula is not good for freezing. Anyway, that is easier to prepare but honestly, I don’t like that for my baby. Not because it is bad for babies and not that I am against the brand. It’s just that I find the taste similar to other flavors. Yeah! I always try my baby’s food. Hahaha.
I hope this helps. I guess other sites have discussed this already, but I found one site about freezing commercial baby food. So I guess not everyone may not be aware of that. Kindly like and share. Cheers!
