Taking care of a newborn baby can be hard, especially when it comes to feeding him. While a mother's milk is enough for a baby initially, there soon comes a point in time when he needs to transition to actual food. Preparing meals for a baby can be a tough task since their digestive systems are still developing. They can only consume food which is soft in texture and doesn't require much chewing. Thankfully, there are a number of helpful appliances that can assist you in this task. Read on to find out which is the best baby food maker.
Price: $145.24 from Amazon.com
This baby food maker from Baby Brezza is a great addition to any household that's home to an infant or two. The appliance has a clean, modern looking design consisting mainly of glossy white plastic and a glass bowl. It'll easily blend in with the aesthetics of a modern, modular kitchen. The great thing about this baby blender is the fact that it comes with a number of patented features and a couple of free extras.
The machine is easy to use because of its well thought out design and the excellent implementation of its features. The large glass bowl of the unit can store a large volume of food. It can allow you to prepare a lot of food at once. Another great aspect of the machine is that not only does it blend, but it can steam it as well. That means you won't have to cook the ingredients on a stove before you put it the machine for blending. As a result, cooking food can be as easy as dumping the ingredients into Brezza baby's food maker and turning it on for the appropriate amount of time.
Of course, you can use it just for blending or steaming food by selecting the appropriate setting from the control panel. The control panel on the front is easy to read and understand. It makes controlling and selecting the different modes of the food maker an easy and intuitive process. An LCD screen displays your selected settings and the amount of time left for the baby's food to be cooked.
As with all products that produce steam, you'll have to clean it every once in a while to prevent the build up of lime. Thankfully, that's really easy to do in this model as the water tank is removable. It comes off easily and can be washed separately.
Price: $52.41 from Amazon.com
This product represents one of the best baby food makers you could get on a budget. Despite its lower price, this food maker from Magic Bullet scores high on quality and features. It comes with a number of useful accessories to go along with the main puree machine. This adds tremendous value to the package as many of the accessories don't even come included with higher-end models.
The blender ships with a couple of different types of blades which you can switch out depending on your needs. Along with the standard blending blend, it also comes with a milling blade to prepare rice and oats. Then there are the various cups which Magic Bullet's baby care system includes. Let's start off with the short cup. The short cup can be used to prepare small amounts of food and store it. It's great if you want to prepare just a small snack for your child.
Then there's the array of storage cups. Each of them is fitted with a date dial to keep track of them. The inclusion of the storage cups makes preparing food in batches much easier. You could cook an entire week's worth of meals and store them in the cups. Magic Bullet have also included a tray to store the cups in so that they're easier to organize. Keeping the cups in the tray also prevents them from tipping over.
The blender is quite powerful as it has a high torque power base running it. It has no troubling blending ingredients into a fine pulp. It won't take the machine long to grind everything present in the high capacity bowl. The bowl can hold a volume of up to 8 cups.
Price: $149.95 from Amazon.com
Beaba is an experienced manufacturer of products designed for babies that has been making baby food grinders for over 25 years. The French company's latest model, the Babycook Pro, continues the brand's legacy of making high-quality products.
The Babycook Pro has a modern design that'll look good on any kitchen countertop. It's available in six different colors, including bright ones like red, cherry and sorbet. The remaining options have more muted color palettes but are just as good looking. They include Latte Mint, Neon and Cloud. Regardless of which color is chosen, the baby food machine is a fashionable piece of equipment that'll improve the style quotient of any kitchen.
The design is more than just skin deep, though. It functions just as well as it looks. Beaba has put so much care and attention into the design and functionality of the product that it can be entirely operated with just one hand. This is great for parents who are busy holding their child in one hand and must prepare food using the other. The unit can also be opened or closed with just a single touch.
From a safety standpoint, the automatic shut off functionality is a great addition. These days, one can never be too safe, especially when it comes to one's children. The automatic shut off ensures that the machine automatically switches itself off after it's been left unattended for a while. This also makes operation easier as you don't have to worry about turning the device off, after using it. You can carry on with your busy schedule, knowing that it'll automatically turn off.
Price: $34.23 from Amazon.com
This product is an import quality baby food maker made by Sage Spoonfuls. It's a handheld blender that's meant to be used by someone actively. The drawback of such an approach to blending is that you simply can't put your ingredients in the machine, turn it on and come back to find that it's cooked. Instead, you have to stand in the kitchen and be a part of the cooking process by operating the blender.
There are advantages to such an approach as well. A handheld immersion blender is smaller in size and occupies less space. The advantage of a compact design is a boost to portability. This is the ideal baby food maker to take along if you're traveling with your baby. Storing or keeping the appliance away after it's not needed is also much easier. It's no wonder then, that Sage Spoonful's immersion blender works great as a mini food maker that you can take around with you.
Another great aspect of this model is its price. This baby food maker is a relatively easy investment for parents on a budget to make. It's a great choice to consider if you feel that a product which will be used for your baby only a few months, at best, is not worth paying a high price for. That's not to say that the blender only functions well considering its price. Quite the contrary, actually. This immersion blender is powerful enough to give more expensive models a run for their money.
Price: $106.08 from Amazon.com
Cuisinart's baby food maker's been receiving some of the best baby food maker reviews online. It's not hard to see why. It has a clean design and a number of premium features. It has a number of unique traits that justifies the higher price of the model. Besides making food, it can also function as a bottle warmer. Warming a bottle of milk, for example, is as easy as preparing food. One simply needs to place the bottle in the machine and turn it on.
The baby food machine has some other nifty modes as well. When it comes to making food, there's the chopping mode. This mode slices and dices fruits and vegetables into small pieces. The chopping is quite precise and produces evenly sized cubes. While blending foods is better for small babies, toddlers prefer the texture of chopped food.
The manufacturers also added a steam mode to cook vegetables in such a manner so that the nutrients and vitamins are retained. A steam blade has been fitted at the bottom to increase the rate at which the steam spreads through the chamber and make steam production more efficiently. Another advantage of having a blade for distributing the steam is that it's spread more evenly.
One of the unique selling points of this model is the blade lock mechanism. This patent-pending design feature allows one to pour the contents of the bowl, without the blade inside moving. Then there's the multitude of accessories included with the machine, as part of the package. Cuisinart includes a spatula, a recipe book, an integrated measuring cup and a bottle adapter ring. The instructions manual is short and to the point, being easy to read and follow as a result.
Price: $161.99 from Amazon.com
The Formula Pro makes the process of mixing formula as simple as pressing a button or two. Baby Brezza have developed a patented mixing technology to prepare formula milk. That technology has been implemented into this product. It's its main selling point.
The machine makes preparing formula extremely easy. There's no need to measure the amount of water required in a cup or the tablespoons of powder needed. The machine does all the work for you. You don't even have to warm the mixture since it comes out of the machine heated to body temperature. What's really amazing is that the machine manages to mix the powder and the liquid without the formation of any bubbles. There's nothing inherently wrong with bubbles. They just unnecessarily increase the volume of the mixture produced. 8 ounces of liquid may not fit into an 8-ounce bottle if there's a lot of bubbles present in the fluid.
All that's really left for you to do is fill formula powder into the airtight container and water into the tank. Then, when you want the mixture, you place a bottle under the funnel and select the volume of liquid to be produced. The airtight container is capable of storing about 700g worth of formula powder. That much amount is enough to produce 8-ounce bottles 20 times. The container can store any formula and the machine works with most brand's powders. However, higher consistency ones like those of Similac Alimentum can't be used.
Price: $119.95 from Amazon.com
Even though this model isn't the most popular, it checks off all the right boxes on paper when it comes to providing a user-friendly experience. If you're willing to give this product a chance, you could discover the best way to make baby food.
At the core of its functionality, this baby food maker can perform basically five tasks. It can blend ingredients, steam them, defrost frozen food, and reheat leftovers. The steamer can be used to warm a bottle.
The blending works as well as one would expect it to. The unit is powerful enough to not have trouble grinding heavier workloads. The fineness of the pulp produced can be selected as well. You can choose to make a fine paste or simply chop the ingredients into small pieces. Beaba claims that it can grind very fast and completely cook food in just 15 minutes. It's ideal for preparing food of any type, from fruits, vegetables and raw fish or meat.
The steamer also works quite well. All the condensed water is stored within the steaming bowl to ensure that no nutrients are lost. It also does a fine job of warming up a bottle of milk and sterilizing it in the process.
Price: $59.99 from Amazon.com
This product from Sage Spoonfuls is quite similar to the previous one we reviewed. In fact, it includes the same handheld immersion blender with the best food processor attachment. Where this package differs is that it's a complete system, not just the baby food mill. In addition to the blender and the attachment, Sage Spoonfuls' system includes 6 plastic containers. The plastic is free from BPA and phthalates which can be harmful to infants. Each container has a capacity of 4 oz which is enough to store a single meal for a baby.
Then there's the guide book. The book has 227 pages full of information which a mother will find pertinent to parenting, especially when it comes to dietary needs. The book mostly consists of recipes of what babies can eat. Each recipe has clear steps which can teach even a person who's never cooked before how to prepare food for a baby. Keeping with the focus on portability, the package includes a pocket guide book which contains just the essential information. It's meant to be carried along with the blender when you travel with your child.
As for actually using the machine, the operation is as simple as always. Unfortunately, since its a handheld machine, you'll have to hold the machine with your hands for as long as you're operating it. To make matters worse, it can take up to 30 minutes to properly puree the entire content of the food processor. At least you won't have to do this often since you can store the prepared food in the included jars. There are enough cups to store 2 weeks worth of food. Most food should stay good for about three days in the fridge or last for three months in the freezer.
Price: $100.33 from Amazon.com
Baby Brezza's third entry to the list is another solid option which parents can consider to help them prepare a nutritious meal for their baby. It' their latest product to come out and features a number of their newest enhancements as a result.
The first thing you notice about this appliance is its design. It's curvy yet stylish at the same time. The front is curved round to be parallel with the perimeter of the cylindrical bowl. This gives it a futuristic look. The body is mostly plain white in color but the orange accent in the middle of the unit gives it a striking presence.
The nice thing about this model is that you can steam and blend food in it at the same time. That means that you can make food for your baby is a single step. You don't have to bother with transferring ingredients after you've boiled them into a blender. Instead, you just put them in the One Step Baby Food Maker. The one bowl design effectively prevents spillage in this way.
Most food makers that are capable of producing steam can be used to defrost and reheat food. This model is no exception. These additional functions increase the versatility of the vegetable mill and make it an indispensable part of a kitchen.
Price: $90.00 from Amazon.com
The Ultimate Baby Food Maker takes a novel approach to the problem of making food. Most standard models feature just a single bowl where steaming and blending is done, often at the same time. This model, however, has two bowls, one for steaming and the other for blending. By separating the blending and steaming units, both actions can be performed on separate ingredients at the same time. This is great for parents who are short on time and need to prepare as much food as possible within a given amount of time. It's also a design that professional users like daycare institutions appreciate. They like it because they can produce more amount of food from a single machine.
While the side-by-side design is unique, how well does it actually perform in practice? Quite well, really. You won't find this baby food maker to be lacking in comparison to any other model.
The steamer can do more than just cook vegetables or beans. It can also perform the function of defrosting or reheating food. It's better to use the steamer for this, rather than a microwave because it heats the food more evenly and rehydrates it at the same time. In fact, you could even fit a bottle of milk into the steamer. Doing so will not only reheat the milk but sterilize it at the same time.