Is your little one ready for food? These tips and tricks to start making your own food at home may help you get started.

As a busy mom of 4, I absolutely love a semi-homemade approach to making baby food. When I first start making baby food, once or twice a week I try 2-3 different varieties for Liam to eat. Nothing crazy complicated and it saves tons of money.

If you’ve never made your own baby food before, all the information can be overwhelming. There are so many gadgets and so-called essentials sold on the market that you don’t really need. Everything you need is probably already in your pantry.

Some useful items:

1. A chopper or blender. We adore our Ninja chopper because it can make smoothies AND chop up foods. Two in one!

2. Fork or masher. Yup, most of the foods can me mashed with a fork.

3. Storage containers. We really love small, wide mouth mason jars (like these Ball jars) with reusable lids.

I really love that almost anything you could want is available in the freezer section now. It’s quite different than when I was first making food for my twins almost 9 years ago. My favorite frozen items to buy are peas, green beans, butternut squash, peas & carrots, broccoli, and vegetable medleys with quinoa.

To make the food, simply steam the frozen veggies in their bags or on the stove. I always recommend using filtered water when making baby food, just to be on the safe side. For carrots, I buy a bag of organic baby carrots, steam them with 1 cup of water, and blend. So simple!

Liam’s first 5 foods:

1. Mashed bananas

2. Peas

3. Avocado

4. Unsweetened applesauce

5. Carrots

When you’re purchasing foods, sometimes when you stray away from the baby food aisle, you can save TONS of money. Here in Michigan, a small container (6 ounces) of baby food applesauce averages around $1, where a large container of unsweetened in the regular aisle runs around $2. Also consider canned fruit in its own juices or no sugar added to blend for food. I love to shop at Aldi for tons of deals.

Now that Liam is a toddler, he eats most of the foods we have at the dinner table, but I still like to make some items especially for him: sweet potato bites, mini muffins or apple slices with cinnamon. Here’s a great post I wrote on Babycenter for yogurt mix-ins!

Once your little one gets older, be sure to check out this video on the Infantino Squeeze Station. We are loving it right now!

Do you have any baby food making tips or favorites?

Parts of this post were written by me for Babycenter.com. Links included are affiliate links, for which a small portion of purchases made are returned back to Dash of Evans.