No matter how delicious the food they serve in front of you, it becomes worthless when you have a problem with chewing or swallowing. But why give up on food when you can have it soft? Bring back your joy in eating by knowing how to puree food. Learn how by reading till the end.
Who Needs Pureed Food?
We all grow old and arrive at a point where swallowing and chewing becomes hard. If you are young now, that doesn’t guarantee that you will not have the difficulties in aging. One of these is the Dysphagia or difficulty in eating, which you can observe to the elderly at home. Your doctor may advise you to maintain a soft diet to get the nutrients that their body needs. Sometimes even drinking could be hard for them, so you need to make the consistency slightly lighter. Pureed food is healthy and can satisfy your loved one’s appetite. With your endless idea and recipes, you can turn that soft food in a delicious gourmet. But how do you puree food?
Learn How to Puree Food:
Choose the Right Ingredients
If you want to know how to make pureed food, you need to choose the right ingredients. Fresh ingredients should be the top priority because the taste and quality of the puree may differ if they aren’t fresh. There are many types of vegetables in the grocery that you can use for the puree. However, some of them are too watery, so you need to use thickening agents like flour, cornstarch, or potato starch. But the following vegetables can be pureed with less or no thickening agents. Remember that the food’s consistency is important because it will help them swallow the food, and it will also help make the puree look appetizing.
- Eggplant
- Beets
- Carrots
- Potatoes
- Fava beans
- Mushrooms
- Cauliflower
- Split peas
- Yam
- Kidney beans
- Lentils
- Spinach
- Zucchini
- Pumpkin
- Green peas
- Chestnuts
- Endive
- Lentils
Avoid Using Food that Is Not Easy to Puree
Sometimes, for our goal to make a new recipe, we are not aware that the ingredient that we used is not easy to puree. After serving the food, they will notice the strings and crumbs in the soup. So how to puree food? You should remove the seeds first and peel-off the tough skin or parts of the vegetable or fruits. Stringy and fibrous food will affect your puree’s consistency, so if you want your aged loved ones to enjoy their meal, better avoid those.
Make Sure Your Cooking Wear and Processors Are Clean
Did you know that if left expose or residues are present in your cooking wears, it can affect the quality, taste, and safety of your puree? That’s a fact. Because if you accidentally use cooking or processors that are contaminated, your loved ones may catch a foodborne illness or food poisoning. So remember, cleanliness is a factor in how to do you puree food. Check the materials before using them as well as the ingredients that you will put in.
Use the Right Equipment
Wondering how to puree food? It would help if you had the right equipment because mashing food manually can be a hustle and time-consuming. Having the right equipment like a blender, handheld processors, or handheld mixers can help you achieve your puree’s right consistency. Using these will also help you dissolve big chunks and reduce lumps quickly because that is what you need—a smooth and easy to swallow food for your loved ones. We don’t want to see them having a hard time with their food, so let us bear in mind that the puree that we are making should be well blended.
Add Liquid to the Blender
Adding liquid to the Blender will give a smoother texture to your puree. You can add milk, juice, vegetable or meat broth, or simply water. Blending the puree is one the best answer on how to puree food. It will help your loved ones easily swallow their food.
Conclusion
Sometimes even if we want to enjoy the food, we are hindered with difficulties like Dysphagia, toothache, or other illnesses that require a soft diet. We must know how to puree food because it can help us get the nutrition that we need, and at the same time, it can help us swallow the food easily. We can still enjoy the food that we eat despite our condition. All we need to do is follow these tips and plan the recipes that we want to try to take back our appetite. There is no harm in trying new recipes, as long as our creativity runs, we can make new puree recipes every day. Get more tips on baby food.