The following are the most common and easiest ways to cook any food. No need to get all chefed up and thinking about complex kitchen maneuvers, with the following four methods you are set to go.
•Steaming: Steaming cooks food by exposing it to steam from continuously boiling water while keeping the food separate from the water in a bamboo or metal steamer (sometimes a metal basket placed in a pot filled with an inch or two of water and sealed with a lid). Preparing food this way preserves the nutrients lost with boiling or, to a lesser degree, simmering.
•Roasting: Roasting cooks foods (in this book, vegetables) through an indirect heat source such as an oven. A high level of nutrients is usually retained, as long as the vegetables aren’t overcooked, and roasting tends to enhance the flavors of certain foods (sweet potatoes, zucchini, and cauliflower, for example). Roasting vegetables typically involves adding a small amount of some type of fat, such as olive oil, to keep food from sticking to the pan and/or drying out.
•Baking: Baking works in much the same way as roasting, but the recipes that call for baking in this book don’t require the addition of oils because the foods being cooked already contain fat (meat, eggs, dairy).
•Sautéing: Sautéing uses a small amount of oil or fat to cook food over medium to high heat.
TOOLS AND EQUIPMENT
Luckily, most of the utensils and cookware required to prepare your baby’s food are likely already in your kitchen. Here are the absolute essential tools you’ll need to get started:
•Stainless-steel steamer basket: Used for steaming fruits and vegetables, a steamer basket is both inexpensive and indispensable.
Stainless steel steamer basket
•Blender or food processor: While both food processors and blenders can be used to make baby food purées and mashes, food processors can also chop, shred, grate, and slice, and are better at mixing and blending hard foods. That said, food processors are also more expensive, and most blenders serve as perfectly adequate baby food makers.
Blender
•Strainer/colander: You’ll need this for rinsing fruits and veggies, as well as draining pastas and other boiled foods.
•Four-sided box grater: This is useful not just for grating cheese, but fruits and vegetables, too.
four-sided-box-grater
•Peeler: A peeler is great for peeling hard vegetables and fruits, including carrots, sweet potatoes, apples, and pears.
Peeler
•Ice cube tray: Whether plastic, stainless steel, or silicone, these trays come in handy for freezing individual portions of baby food.
Ice cube tray