Coming up with new and exciting ideas for food to offer your baby can be difficult when you’ve been at baby led weaning for a while. That’s why I love knocking up a simple meal of pasta and pesto for my babies. Introducing a new variant on the traditional combination of basil and pine nuts – this pea pesto baby led weaning recipe!
Pea Pesto for Babies
One of the easiest meals to prepare for your baby when the cupboards or bare or you’ve had a particularly challenging day is pasta. What can be simpler than throwing pasta in a pan, topping it up with water and leaving it to boil for ten minutes or so?
If you’re feeling slightly more adventurous than a typical pasta and tomato sauce dish, you must try this baby led weaning pea pesto for babies. It takes less than five minutes to prepare and best of all, you can batch make it to freeze in ice cube trays for the lazy days of the future!
Why offer peas to your baby?
Peas are such a fun food to offer your baby. Many mums worry that baby will choke on them, but they can easily be squished to prevent them being a choking hazard – just as you would with blueberries!
Peas are a great way for baby to practise their pincer skills. Tip some squished peas on their highchair and watch them try and pick them up to feed themselves with their thumb and finger. Hours of fun!
Our favourite baby led weaning products
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Peas are a great source of:
- Magnesium – helps keep the heart beating and helps prevent tooth decay
- Phosphorus – grows and maintains healthy tissue
- Iron – supports proper neurological development
- Vitamin C – maintains a healthy immune system
- Fibre – supports digestive health
- Protein – essential for growth
What is the best pasta shape to serve with pesto?
During my days of baby led weaning two babies, I think I’ve probably tried every common type of pasta including:
- Spaghetti noodles
- Tagliatelle
- Fusilli
- Penne
- Ravioli
- Lasagne
- Macaroni
- Tortellini
- Farfalle
My favourites types of pasta are spaghetti, fusilli and tortellini as they’re all easy to get hold of in the supermarket, easy for baby to self feed and don’t need anything special doing to them to make them baby friendly.
More pesto recipes:
When can I give my baby pesto?
Your baby can eat pesto from six months onwards, just as they can with all table foods as part of their baby led weaning journey.
Is pesto too salty for babies?
Store bought pesto in a jar can contain a lot of sodium, but as long as you are preparing the pesto yourself, you are very much in control of how much salt you use – therefore your baby’s pesto could have absolutely zero salt in it!
This pea pesto baby led weaning recipe has been created specifically for babies, so they will contain low volumes of salt and be perfectly safe and healthy.
What’s the best blender to use to make pesto?
I use a 2 in 1 Kenwood Blender & Food Processor that makes batch cooking for baby super easy!
Not only can you make yummy smoothies for yourself, you can whizz up purees using the blender and then use the food processor to chop a whole host of veggies and make yummy desserts too!
- EXCELLENT SAFETY FEATURES: The interlock can be found on the bowl itself and the food processor will not activate unless engaged properly
- WATTAGE AND WEIGHT: 400W and 2.17kg; cord storage and dishwasher safe parts including the blade for chopping and pureeing
- LARGE CAPACITY: 1.4 litre capacity making it ideal for preparing large meals, bread and pastry mixes and light creams
- BODY AND BOWL MATERIAL: Plastic, size (cm): 27.5L x 15W x 17.5H The multi-mill chops and grinds herbs, spices and nuts and is ideal for grating cheese and slicing potatoes
- WORKING BOWL CAPACITY: The dry capacity is0.8kg and working bowl liquid capacity is 0.8L for egg whites and light creams among other dishes
Can you freeze pea pesto?
Absolutely! I love using ice cube trays to store extra portions of baby pesto that I make so that I have yummy and healthy sauce at hand in my freezer stash whenever I am having a lazy Mum day!
Carefully use a teaspoon to spoon the pesto mixture into a silicone ice cube tray and pop in the freezer. Once fully frozen, you can squeeze the pesto cubes out and pop them in a freezer bag so you can reuse the ice cube tray for the next lot of batch cooking!
Pea Pesto Baby Led Weaning Recipe
- Total Time: 0 hours
Description
Discover this delicious and healthy pea pesto baby led weaning recipe. Full of lovely nutrients for baby – the whole family can enjoy this variant on the pesto classic!
Ingredients
- 75g grams frozen peas
- handful pine nuts
- 6 basil leaves
- 5tbsp olive oil
- dash lemon juice
- 15g parmesan
Instructions
1. Soak the frozen peas in boiling water in a bowl for five minutes.
2. Add all listed ingredients into a food processor and whizz for 30-40 seconds until a paste forms.
3. Scrape the pesto out into a bowl ready to serve to baby with their pasta or to divide up ready for freezing.
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Additional Time: 0 hours
- Cook Time: 0 hours
- Category: Baby Led Weaning
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1
- Calories: 110
- Sugar: 1
- Sodium: 33
- Fat: 11
- Saturated Fat: 1
- Unsaturated Fat: 9
- Trans Fat: 0
- Carbohydrates: 2
- Fiber: 1
- Protein: 2
- Cholesterol: 1
Author: Nicola Hughes
Nicola has weaned both of her boys using the baby led weaning method. She loves nothing better than creating simple recipes that anyone can recreate, using as few ingredients as possible. All of her recipes have been tried and tested by both Dexter and Felix and have their seal of approval!
Alicia
Wednesday 20th of March 2024
Thanks for sharing this recipe, it was really tasty! I doubled the quantities so that there was enough for me and my little one (he's nearly 8 months) to have for dinner and then froze the rest in ice cube trays for future meals. We both really enjoyed it. I loved the fresh taste of the peas - it gave it a nice twist on traditional pesto.