The best first purees for your baby are iron-rich foods: pureed meat, poultry, fish, lentils, beans, and iron-fortified infant cereal. Iron stores from birth start running low around 6 months, making iron the single most important nutrient to prioritize when you begin solids. From there, you can quickly branch out to vegetables, fruits, and common allergens like peanut and egg.
Most babies are ready to start around 6 months, though every child develops at their own pace. The key signs to watch for: your baby can sit up with support, has steady head and neck control, and opens their mouth when food is offered. Starting before 4 months is not recommended.
Iron-Rich Foods Come First
Your baby’s iron needs jump significantly at 6 months, and breast milk or formula alone can no longer keep up. That’s why pediatric nutrition guidelines recommend offering iron-rich foods at least twice a day from the very start. This doesn’t mean rice cereal and nothing else. You have a wide range of options:
- Pureed meats: beef, chicken, turkey, pork, and lamb are excellent sources of the type of iron your baby absorbs most easily
- Fish: salmon, trout, and other fatty fish (choose low-sodium canned versions when fresh isn’t available)
- Eggs: whole eggs, including the yolk, can be scrambled soft and mashed or pureed
- Legumes: lentils, chickpeas, split peas, and kidney beans pureed smooth
- Tofu: soft or silken tofu mashed with a fork
- Iron-fortified infant cereal: oat or barley varieties mixed with breast milk or formula
Iron from plant foods like lentils and beans isn’t absorbed as well as iron from meat. You can boost absorption by pairing those foods with something rich in vitamin C. Think lentil puree with green peas, tofu mashed with broccoli, or infant cereal topped with mashed strawberries. Serving plant-based iron alongside a small amount of pureed meat or fish also helps.
Vegetables and Fruits to Add Early
Once you’ve introduced a couple of iron-rich foods, start rotating in vegetable and fruit purees. There’s some evidence that offering vegetables before fruits may help babies accept bitter and savory flavors more readily, since babies are born with a natural preference for sweetness (breast milk is sweet, after all). You don’t need to follow a rigid order, but leaning toward vegetables first is a reasonable strategy.
Good early vegetable purees include sweet potato, peas, zucchini, avocado, and butternut squash. For fruits, try banana, pear, apple, peach, and mango. Avocado and banana don’t even need cooking. Just mash them with a fork until smooth.
One safety note for homemade purees: certain vegetables, including carrots, beets, spinach, squash, and green beans, can contain higher levels of nitrates from the soil. By 6 months, most babies have developed the enzymes needed to handle these safely, but avoid offering homemade versions of these particular vegetables before that age. Commercial baby food brands are required to test for nitrate levels, so store-bought versions of these vegetables carry less risk for younger infants.
When to Introduce Allergens
Current guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend introducing peanut, egg, and other major allergens around 6 months of life. This applies to all babies, not just those with a family history of allergies. Earlier thinking suggested delaying allergens, but the evidence now clearly shows that early introduction reduces the risk of developing food allergies.
For peanut, mix a small amount of smooth peanut butter into a puree your baby already tolerates, or thin it with breast milk or formula. Never give whole peanuts or chunks of peanut butter, which are choking hazards. Egg can be offered as a well-cooked, mashed scramble. Introduce one new allergen at a time, wait a day or two, and watch for any reaction like hives, vomiting, or swelling before moving on to the next one.
How Much and How Often
Start small. In the first few days, your baby may only take a bite or two before turning away. A general starting point is 1 to 2 tablespoons per sitting, once or twice a day. Follow your baby’s cues. If they lean in and open their mouth, offer more. If they turn their head, push the spoon away, or clamp their mouth shut, they’re done. Breast milk or formula remains the primary source of nutrition through the first year, so solids at this stage are about practice and exposure, not calories.
Over the first few weeks, you can gradually increase both the amount and the number of meals. By 8 or 9 months, many babies are eating two to three small meals a day alongside their usual milk feeds.
Moving Beyond Smooth Purees
Smooth purees are a starting point, not a destination. You should only need them for the first few weeks. From there, start making things lumpier: mashed with a fork instead of blended, or ground into small soft pieces. Many babies can handle lumpy textures right from 6 months alongside smooth ones.
This progression matters. Research shows that babies who don’t experience lumpy textures until after 9 months are more likely to develop problems accepting new foods as toddlers. So resist the urge to keep everything perfectly smooth for months on end. Soft finger foods like strips of ripe banana, steamed sweet potato sticks, or well-cooked pasta can be introduced alongside purees once your baby shows interest in grabbing food.
Homemade vs. Store-Bought Purees
Both are fine, and most parents end up using a mix. Homemade purees give you complete control over ingredients and texture. The basics are simple: steam or roast a vegetable or fruit until soft, blend with a bit of water or breast milk, and serve. For meat, cook thoroughly and puree with enough liquid to reach a smooth consistency.
If you’re making batches, refrigerate fruit and vegetable purees for up to 2 days, and meat or fish purees for just 1 day. Frozen purees stay at best quality for about a month. Ice cube trays work well for freezing individual portions you can thaw as needed.
Store-bought purees are convenient, but they come with a caveat. A large-scale review of commercial baby foods found detectable levels of heavy metals (lead, cadmium, arsenic, or mercury) in roughly 65% of products tested worldwide. Rice-based products and fish-based baby foods showed the highest concentrations of arsenic, while cereals had the most cadmium. The FDA has launched a “Closer to Zero” initiative to reduce these levels, and products sold in the EU must meet strict maximum limits. To limit your baby’s exposure, vary the brands and types of food you buy, don’t rely heavily on rice-based cereals, and rotate between homemade and commercial options.
A Sample First-Foods Timeline
There’s no single correct order for introducing foods, but a practical approach for the first month of solids might look like this:
- Week 1: Iron-fortified infant cereal or pureed meat, offered once a day in small amounts
- Week 2: Add a vegetable puree (sweet potato, peas, or zucchini), rotating with your iron-rich food
- Week 3: Introduce a second vegetable or a fruit, and try a second iron source like lentils or egg
- Week 4: Add a common allergen like peanut butter thinned into an existing puree, and begin offering lumpier textures
The goal by the end of the first month or two is variety. Babies who are exposed to a wide range of flavors and textures early tend to be less picky eaters later. Don’t be discouraged if your baby makes a face or spits something out. It can take 10 to 15 exposures to a new food before a baby accepts it. Keep offering, keep it low pressure, and let your baby set the pace.