How to Store, Freeze & Reheat Food | Baby Food

I'm going to review how to store, freeze, and reheat baby food at home. I think that when you're making any of your own baby food at home, it's obviously much more time consuming than buying off of store shelves, so any tips or tricks that I have to offer you to save you time is always great to hear. So, when I'm preparing at home, I tend to prepare 2 to 3 times the amount of portions and put it into an ice cube tray such as this. So, when you're looking to store in the freezer, you can portion them out, allow them to freeze, and then when they're completely frozen solid you'll pop them out of the tray and then place them into an airtight container such as a freezer-proof plastic bag. And the frozen food will keep safely in your freezer for up to 3 months. And when you're looking to reheat this food, I suggest moving the portion you'd like to use out of the freezer 24 hours before you plan to use it. So if you move it from the freezer overnight, by the time you're ready to reheat it the next day it's nice and soft and will reheat within 30 seconds to a minute. If you're storing in the fridge, you'll want to store in an airtight container as well, but it will only last 4 to 5 days safely. And I always recommend using mother's intuition and always smell or taste the food prior to giving it to your baby just to make sure that nothing has gone bad. When you are reheating, there's 2 techniques that you can use. You can microwave, which is something that you need to use a little extra caution with, because microwaves do not heat evenly. There can tend to be pockets of heat and so the outer area of the baby food can feel cold to the touch, but there can actually be a heat bubble in there that is so hot it can burn your child. So you just want to make sure with microwaving, try to reheat in 10 to 15 segments and stir in-between until you reach the desired temperature that you can safely serve your child their food. What I tend to prefer at home, because it's a little bit safer from a heat standpoint, is to place the bowl, porcelain or ceramic dish, inside a boiling pot of water, and then stir for 30 seconds to a minute until you reheat to the proper temperature. One thing that's very, very important to remember is that once you reheat the baby food, you should never use those portions again. It's not safe to reheat more than 1 time. So if you heat the food for your baby and they don't finish the entire dish, you want to throw that away because the risk of bacterial contamination is much too high. So those are the top ways to store, freeze, and reheat baby food safely at home.