Baby food in Germany – First baby meal

In Germany it is recommended to start with a vegetable porridge during lunch time as first baby meal. In this post I explain how I prepared our baby’s first meal.

You can opt to give a jar to your baby. To start chose jars with the vegetables one vegetable from this list:

• pumpkin
• Parsnip
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Carrot
• Turnip
• Zucchini

There are many jar options in supermarkets with baby food in Germany. Some of them are even made with biological products.

If you decide to cook it yourself, here is how I did for my baby:

1. Clean the vegetables
2. If necessary peel it
3. Cut in small pieces
4. Cook it using a pot, a steam cooker or a baby food machine (I used Avent 2 in 1)
5. Blend the cooked vegetable
6. Take some spoons of the vegetable porridge to a bowl
7. Wait until it cools down to a baby friendly temperature
8. Add a tea spoon of olive oil

Your baby’s first meal is done! Now you can try to give him/her some spoons and see how will your baby accept them. But if your baby doesn’t want to eat, do not force him/her.

Even if you decide to cook your baby’s first meal it doesn’t mean that you have to do it for every single meal. You can occasionally give your baby a food jar or even alternate jar food and self made baby food. Cooking for a baby might be to demanding and stressful. This kind of feelings are transmitted to our children. My advice would be for you to take that also into consideration when making the decision to cook yourself or not.

Check here other introduction to solids’ meals:

• Baby food in Germany – Second baby meal
• Baby food in Germany – Third baby meal

These recommendations are based on the guidelines for introducing solids to babies of the In Form (Deutschlands Initiative für gesunde Ernährung und mehr Bewegung / German initiative for healthy nutrition and more exercise).