by Erin Losie
After the Stocks and a couple easily digestible foods, I moved onto liver! I was a little squeamish about this one. The thought of eating liver grosses me out, how could I feed it to the baby?!? After reading about the health benefits—it’s a great source for iron and zinc and really all nutrients, I didn’t see how I could withhold it from the baby because of my issues.
I’d never bought liver before so I headed to my favorite butcher, Harvey’s Market, in Union Station, to buy it. For this round I bought beef liver, but chicken liver will work too. I took the liver home, put it in the refrigerator, where it sat for three days and went bad.
“UGH!” I thought! “I finally bought the stuff and it went bad!”
Lesson learned liver goes bad quickly. I went back to the market, bought more, took it home and cooked it immediately. On this first go round, I cut off a small slice, cubed it, and cooked it in coconut oil. Like so:
It smelled really good as it cooked!
“This may not be so bad,” I thought.
Once liver is cooked it is really soft and easy to mash, which is what I did.
I then warmed some beef broth and added the liver to it. When mealtime arrived, I fed it to baby girl, like a soup, and she loved it!
I did try it and it wasn’t too bad. I’ve still had a tough time with it though. It has a very strong flavor. I’ve tried mixing a little with taco meat to mask the taste. It’s probably in my head, but it doesn’t work. I’ve since bought chicken liver. The flavor isn’t as strong, but I’m still working to get myself to eat it. It’s so healthy!
After the first cooking I froze the remaining liver, uncut, which made it impossible to cut when it came time to cook some for baby girl. However, I realized I could grate it frozen! Like so:
Very easy!
I used the small grater from months 6-9 and then the larger one since. Caution: Your hand gets very cold holding the frozen liver. I recommend investing in some kitchen gloves.
I found the best way to cook the liver is to grate it, then cook it in broth, and serve!
Note: Super Nutrition for Babies recommends feeding the baby only one ounce of liver every other day or ½ an ounce per day due to the high vitamin A content.
Liver
1-2 teaspoons of grated liver (beef or chicken)
¼ to ½ a cup of beef or chicken broth (or really how ever much you want!)
-Grate the frozen liver
-Place liver and broth in sauce pan, cook on medium heat, until the liver is cooked, and the broth is warm. About 5 minutes.