Baby Pasta
This is a nice simple vegetable based baby pasta recipe that all my four children have enjoyed when they were young, and actually continue to enjoy now that they are at school (although of course I don't call it 'baby pasta' when I serve it to my big kids.)
Why This Recipe Works
- Quick to make, you can make the sauce in the time it takes to boil the pasta.
- Easy, no strange ingredients or tricky steps
- Freezes well, make and freeze for easy pre-made baby and toddler meals.
- Loved: Enjoyed by the whole family
Ingredients you will need
To make my baby pasta you will need pumpkin, carrot, tinned tomatoes and spinach. I use olive oil and dried herbs in the recipe and a little cream is optional. You will also need dried pasta in a shape your baby manages.
Substitutes
- Cream: The cream is optional and can be left out
- Spinach: Frozen spinach can be used, or the spinach can be substituted for another green leafy vegetable such as kale, or silverbeet. Grated zucchini also works well in this recipe.
- Pumpkin: The pumpkin can be substituted for squash or butternut squash, sweet potato or kumara also works well.
- Italian herbs: any dried or fresh herbs that you like will be fine, basil, mixed herbs, oregano all work well.
- Pasta: You can use any pasta that you like, a gluten-free pasta, wholemeal pasta, lentil pasta or high-protein pasta will all work well.
- Pasta shapes: I like to use spiral or penne, or large macaroni shapes as they tend to be nice and easy for kids to pick up and babies to self-feed.
Step by Step Instructions
Step one: Cook your choice of pasta, use the packet instructions as a guideline. For babies, I recommend cooking the pasta slightly longer (2-3 minutes longer)than recommended so it is very soft to the bite and not al dente.
Step two: Grate the pumpkin and the carrot, you should have around a cup of each.
Step three: In a frypan heat the oil over a medium/high heat, sauté the grated pumpkin and carrot until soft. This should take around 5 minutes
Step four: Add the tinned tomatoes, herbs, and spinach leaves to the pan, simmer until the sauce is thick and the spinach leaves cooked, this should take around 5 minutes.
Step five: Cool in the pan before blending (it can be very dangerous to blend piping hot liquids in a blender.
Step five: Puree the sauce, add the optional cream if desired and then stir through the pasta.
Top Tips
Here is how you can make my baby pasta recipe perfectly every time!
- As your baby grows older you can stop blending the pasta sauce, although in saying that, my school kids still love this pasta from when they were little.
- If you don't feel like grating the veggies you can just chop them, the cooking time will be a little longer.
- I use quite a bit of olive oil in this recipe, this keeps the calorie content of the pasta sauce high, and also helps the sauce thick
- A sprinkling of finely grated cheese on top of the pasta can be a tasty addition, my kids call it snow cheese when I grate parmesan cheese over their pasta at the table using a microplane.
- Don't salt the pasta water or the sauce if you are making this for a young baby, young babies should not have too much salt.
