If You Just Threw Out All Your Baby Food, Here’s How to Make Your Own

This is the gold-standard starter product for making baby food. It's the easiest table-side product you'll have and great for when you just want to make enough food for a meal or two for the day. It's also great to have on hand if you're making margaritas for yourself — just saying. 

Batch cooking is your friend, and this food processor is top of the line. You can make so much baby food in this bad boy, and it cleans like a dream. I'm talking the stickiest, stringiest ginger chicken baby curry isn't going to get stuck around the blade or stick to the sides. A little dish soap, a light sponge, and it's ready to go.

This is wonderful for blending soups or pureeing vegetables right in the pot. It also comes with a few attachments that are great for making whipped cream or gelato. 

This steams veggies and grains, cooks meat, and softens and cooks beans all at a speed that parents will love. The interior is stainless steel that can take an absolute beating, so you don't have to be precious with it. (It also makes the best roast beef.) 

These are the perfect size to use for making puffs. You can fit over 100 puffs on one sheet. Nordic Ware is known for its sturdy quality. Our parenting editor has had her sheet pans for 17 years, and they're still good as new. (OK, the bottoms need to be scrubbed, but still.)

This pouch is great because it doesn't spill out as quickly as traditional ones, so it works well with thinner mixes or cereals. The design is super simple to take apart to clean, too. Made of medical-grade silicone, the Squeasy is dishwasher-safe. Just make sure to put the top part in with the silverware so it doesn't fall on the heating implement and melt.

Apart from being adorable, these four ounce pouches are BPA-, phthalate-, and PVC-free, and made using lead-free materials with a no choke cap. They are simple to clean and fill, and are completely dishwasher-safe. You can stash them in your diaper bag, and hand them over when your baby gets hangry. (Can't promise they won't make a mess, though.)

When you're making big batches of baby food, you can use these trays to freeze them. Then, after they are frozen, you just pop them in a Stasher bag, wash the tray, and reuse. The tray is made of silicone, and the top is a BPA-free plastic. The divots push in like sturdy bubble wrap once the food is frozen, so you don't have to strain to remove the cubes. 

Stasher makes simply the best reusable zip top bags on the market. They're sturdy, dishwasher- and freezer-safe, and you can open them one-handed. (An underrated quality until you have a baby who demands to be held 24/7.) Pop out your freezer portions of food right into this, label it with writable washi tape, and you're good to go.

What's that? Dishwasher-safe baby food jars that are also very aesthetically pleasing? That's exactly what these are, and thanks to the removable ring, you can even boil them to sterilize them if need be. They're the perfect size for a small meals or snack's worth of food, and they open easier than most traditional baby food jars. 

These mats are every bit as good as the fancy name-brand mats, and for half the cost. They're perfect for making puffs or yogurt drops for your baby.  (Also great for cookies.)

You'll need to label your baby food jars — because let's face it, all baby food kinda looks the same. These washable pens are very visible on the outside of the jar, and they don't make a mess.

This is the best writeable tape for labeling freezer containers. It's nice to have multiple colors so that you can delineate between fruits, vegetables, meat, and grain. It's also fantastic for your planner or labeling anything you need to label.

I know what you're thinking: "I'm not making a cake!" No, you are not, but filling jars and pouches is easier with these. Also, did you know you can make your own puffs? You absolutely can, and it's not even difficult. With these pastry bags, you can get it done in zero time.

Baby food pouches and jars may be dishwasher-safe, but sometimes, a pre-clean is necessary (or you don't have a dishwasher). These brushes will get in all the nooks and crannies, cleaning out all the gunk. It's also good for cleaning the Nutribullet.

Scrub Daddy is simply the best sponge on the market. If you say, accidentally burn the beans in your Instant Pot to the point where it's a blackened pile of glue at the bottom of the pot, this will get it off. 

It's all about safety, right? Making sure that your baby's food has been cooked to the proper temperature is extremely important. 

Trust us, once you use the spray version of Dawn, you'll never go back. It really penetrates the sticky film left by food, and works like magic to get it off. Also, you can really get in the pieces of your mixer with this before you even soak it.

Sure, you can use some of these accessories to make things like cheesecake, but really, what you want for making baby food are the steamer basket and meat grill. It makes getting everything in and out of your Instant Pot a breeze. Plus, the grips and tongs are excellent quality.

This is wholesome, rich, high-quality, rigorously-tested baby food. It's meat-forward, which means there's plenty of iron and B-12 for growing babies. Plus, babies love it because it has such great flavor.

Cerebelly has tons of unique flavor profiles, and you can buy the pouches in small groups, or by a subscription. They are USDA-organic, and all products are tested thoroughly. 

Hello Yumi is a subscription service with singularly unique blends sent in glass jars. There are dragonfruit, curry, kidney bean — a ton of options that will tickle your baby’s palate. At $35 per week, it's worth it given how it's tested and packaged.

This subscription service is similar in price and blend types to Hello Yumi, but is packaged in recyclable #5 PP plastic. They boast a ton of pre- and probiotics, helping babies digestion.