Sweet potatoes are an excellent first food for babies. They are rich in vitamin content, folic acid, and dietary fiber. And, best of all they’re easy to digest as they contain simple carbohydrates or starch. After Devansh turned 6 months old, I started feeding him sweet potatoes almost daily. I would either steam or boil 5-6 sweet potatoes at a time, mash them, and then freeze the excess for future use. Time is an essential commodity when you have a 6 month old baby, right? :-) After you introduce cow/buffalo milk in your baby’s diet, you can start feeding him/her this sweet potato porridge as per the recipe given below. For babies less than one, you can cook this porridge in water and then add breast milk or formula.
This porridge makes for an ideal sugarless dessert for babies, toddlers, and young kids. Bon appetit li’l one. :-)
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Sweet Potato Porridge for Babies, Toddlers
Ingredients
- 2 medium sized sweet potatoes / ratalu
- Approx. 1 tsp grated jaggery
- Approx. 1 cup milk (See note below)
- Approx. 1/5th tsp cinnamon / dalchini powder (See note below)
Instructions
- Wash sweet potatoes thoroughly.
- Peel the sweet potatoes and cut them into thin slices.
- Steam or boil them till they become tender. You can cook them in a pressure cooker on medium flame for about 15-20 minutes (7-8 whistles). Or, you can boil them in 1-2 cups of water for about 10 minutes.
- Mash the steamed/boiled sweet potatoes finely.
- Sometimes even after mashing properly, sweet potatoes contain a lot of thread-like fiber. Take it out as your baby’s not equipped to deal with it while eating.
- Heat milk in a pan and then add mashed potatoes. You basically need 7-8 tbsp of mashed potatoes.
- Add about 2 pinches—if there’s any such thing :-) —of cinnamon powder.
- Keep stirring continuously till the mixture reaches desired consistency. Ensure that no lumps form in the mixture as you stir.
- Add jaggery and stir to ensure that it dissolves properly in the mixture. (The measurement for jaggery given in the list of ingredients is an approximation. Taste the sweet potato to determine how much jaggery you want to add. You don’t want to make the porridge too sweet.)
- Allow the porridge to cool a bit before serving it to your little one; although, you wouldn’t want to serve it cold. It tastes best when it is slightly warm.
Notes
For babies younger than one year, cook the porridge in water, and then add breast milk or formula after it is cooked.
After adding jaggery, don’t cook the porridge for more than half a minute as it’ll cause milk to curdle. It’s best to turn off heat and then add jaggery. You can use powdered jaggery as it dissolves fast.
If you haven’t introduced cinnamon in your baby’s diet, please check with his/her pediatrician before doing the same. You might find this link about introducing spices in your baby’s food useful.
Also See:
Baby Food Recipes by MumMumTime
awesome! ! m gona try this for Anahita……good going Mukta….. :)
Thanks Sheetal :)
Great, will try it today!
Nice…thanks for sharing and yeah keep blogging!
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http://ektakhetan.blogspot.in/
hey i tried this recipe yesterday and was blessing you all through. Naisha had viral, and whenever this happens, the first thing that she gives up is her food. When i say gives up, i swear she just stops eating, she's been a very fussy eater, so to bring her to solids took me 2 and half years. When unwell, she refuses to chew at all. This sweet potato porridge was a saving grace. thx again!
Hey glad Naisha liked it Eisha…you end up feeling so helpless when your child's unwell nah…you can try giving her rice kanji as well…I usually have that when I'm unwell…it's like a rice soup…u can add black pepper powder or jeera powder to it…haven't gotten around to writing the recipe yet…but you'll find the recipe on the net easily…it's good for babies too…hope Naisha feels better soon :)
thanks for share.
I wonder why other professionals don’t notice your website much m glad I found this.
vegetarian recipes
Thanks :)
Hey Mukta… m unable to share recepes on guest page.. let me know how can i do that??
Hi Manali,
For guest recipes, you have to send me the recipe and I'll post it as per this blog's format. Why don't you send me a msg on FB we can discuss this there. My FB page's URL is: http://www.facebook.com/MumMumTime
tasty porridge…is my family fav now…thanks Mukta
Glad you liked it Akila Rani :)
Awesome and tasty recipies for my sweet little daughter adya… Thanks a lot for sharing these recipies..
You're welcome Mukta…lots of love to Adya…first time a comment from my namesake :)
Hey can we add jaggery to milk . I mean is it ok as per ayurveda
Hi Pooja…boiling milk with jaggery added to it curdles the milk so if you want to bring some mixture to a boil with milk added to it, it's best to add jaggery in the end after you're done boiling the mixture…I've mentioned this in my kheer posts but I think I'll also mention it here…however if you're just heating the mixture you can add the jaggery safely I've done it many a times…but I think I'll modify the recipe to avoid any confusion…
Regarding Ayurveda, I'm not expert on Ayurveda but I do get a lot of queries regarding usage of jaggery in babies' food and so have read up about medicinal values of jaggery/gur on the Internet and Ayurveda too considers it to have many medicinal values…after reading your query I did check with a family friend of mine who's done BAMS and he confirmed it's absolutely fine to mix the two. :)
Tried dis recipe today for my baby… She finished her entire meal… Ur amazing Mukta… Stay blessed …. I keep thanking god dat I found ur website
Aww thanks Renita. That’s such a sweet comment. Made my day….:)
I tried this recipe and turned out to be really very good. You’ve explained the method really nicely.
Thanks fr this recipe. I am new to this site. I hav two children . Elder one 5yrs old and younger is one yr old. Both r very fusy eaters. I tried ur sweet potato carrot soup as well as this recipe. My both kids liked . I was very happy . Thank you very much.
I had a doubt hw to use t frozen sweet potato( which we hav smashed and kept) to be used while making porridge. Pls give me a reply.
Hi Biji. Glad your children liked this porridge and the soup as per MumMumTime recipes. Regarding your query, if you have frozen mashed sweet potato, take it out of the freezer, allow it to thaw (come to room temperature). Then add it while making this porridge (at step 6 as per this recipe). If you plan to use (steamed/boiled) mashed sweet potato regularly, it saves time to have it ready so you may want to freeze it and store it. So then making this porridge or its soup doesn’t take too much time. Otherwise you can use steam it and mash it as and when required.