For those following Baby Led Weaning, deciding how to offer meat to our babies can be a difficult one. I’ve been playing with the idea of ground meat (savoury mince on a preloaded spoon perhaps?), a tender beef stew or a slow cooked leg of lamb. I ended up deciding to use ground beef to make mini burgers as I felt that a ground meat would be easier for Teddy to physically handle and in the form of a burger, easier for him to hold and self-feed.
In our house, Teddy still hasn’t got any teeth yet. He’s 8 months old now and has thus far has been happy munching his way through plenty of different fruits and vegetables, breads, cereals and teething biscuits. So far, these foods have provided him more than enough learning opportunities and have kept him busy practicing his developing mouth skills. Now that he is a bit bigger, I thought it time to start him on the meat food group.
Meat, particularly red meat, is an important consideration when starting solids as it provides a highly absorbable form of iron and is also an important source of zinc and Vitamin B12.
Ingredients
450 grams lean beef mince
1 carrot
100 grams spinach leaves
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 cup fresh breadcrumbs
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon tomato paste
Preparation
- Steam spinach either in the microwave with a little water or in a steamer for 5 minutes. When spinach is cool enough to handle, squeeze spinach of excess water and blend in a food processor until smooth. Place in a mixing bowl.
- Place carrot in same food processor and whizz until finely chopped. Place in bowl with spinach.
- Add mince to spinach and carrots and add egg, breadcrumbs, garlic powder and tomato paste.
- Mix ingredients thoroughly and form into ‘burgers’ using 2-3 tablespoons of mince mixture for each burger.
- Cook burgers on a lighly oiled grill pan (or fry pan) over medium to high heat for 5-6 minutes each side or until cooked through.
- Cool before offering as a finger food for baby (or toddler).
Makes 6 adult size burgers and 6 baby size burgers (or lots of mini burgers)
A word about eggs
I have used one egg in this recipe as it helps to bind the burgers together so they don’t fall apart when cooking. Eggs however, are one of the more common foods that can cause allergies in babies and children. Previous recommendations have stated that it was fine to introduce babies to well cooked egg yolks from 6 months of age but to leave the introduction of egg whites until after 12 months. The most recent recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics (2008) however are that “there is no evidence for delaying introduction of any foods beyond this period [4-6 months], including those considered highly allergenic”.
So what does this mean? When deciding to introduce eggs to your little one for the first time you need to talk to your child’s doctor, and make an informed decision about when you feel comfortable adding eggs to your baby’s diet. Given my husband and I do not have a strong family history of allergy and given our boy is now a little bit older (8 months) we felt it was time to start him on a little bit of well cooked egg. We did follow the 3 day rule of waiting 3 days after giving him egg for the first time before adding anything new to his diet so we could monitor him for signs of a reaction.
Reference:
Greer FR, Sicherer SH, Burks W et al. Effects of Early Nutritional Interventions on the Development of Atopic Disease in Infants and Children: The Role of Maternal Dietary Restriction, Breastfeeding, Timing of Introduction of Complementary Foods, and Hydrolyzed Formulas. Pediatrics. 2008;121(1):183-191.
