As a new parent, one of the most important decisions is choosing how to provide your baby with the best possible nutrition. Making your own baby food at home allows you to use only fresh ingredients and avoid the preservatives and additives found in store-bought baby food.
Baby food manufacturers have made this dream a reality by providing the ability to steam and puree fruits, vegetables, and meats in a single device! Baby food manufacturers have been on the market in Europe since the early 1990s and are now more than two decades old in the United States, saving millions of parents time and effort when making fresh, healthy purees.
Over the years, these systems have gotten better and better, with greater reliability, ease of use and convenience, more powerful motors, dishwasher-friendly parts, and BPA, lead, and phthalate-free materials.
Turnips, peas, sweet potatoes? Fun and healthy dessert mixtures like banana blueberry puree? No problem. Once you’ve mastered a quality baby food maker, you’ll invent recipes like a professional chef! Your baby will love that you feed them so many delicious fruits and vegetables!
The best baby food manufacturers combine a steamer and food processor into one, include all the accessories you need, are BPA-free, dishwasher-safe, and stand the test of time and reuse. Let’s see which models meet these criteria!
1. BEABA Babycook 4-in-1 Solo Baby Food Machine
The award-winning BEABA Babycook 4-in-1 baby feeder is known for its reliability, ease of use, safety and efficiency. They are the best baby food manufacturer on the market, and for good reason. BEABA looks and performs great. It comes in a large 4.7-cup capacity, so you can hold multiple servings in one batch. You can use it with just one hand, so you can hold your baby with one arm while steaming, pureing, thawing, or reheating food. The water reservoir on the water side used for cooking is stainless steel instead of plastic, and all surfaces that come into contact with food are free of BPA, lead, and phthalates. We found it easy to clean, easy to use, and highly reliable. When pureing with a baby food blender, we were impressed by how quiet the motor was and how evenly the fruits and vegetables were steamed. To steam, all you need to do is put the freshly cut fruit or vegetables in the basket and press the steaming button. After about 13-15 minutes, when you’re done, you can simply pour a basket of freshly steamed food into the bottom of the bowl and turn the knob to start making a smooth puree. We think the buttons and knobs are very intuitive and easy to use. We use it to make baby puree and also make a little smoothie by mixing some frozen fruit and spinach. Works really well as a stand-alone blender!
2. Babymoov Duo Meal StationBaby Food Machine
This is a new feature this year, and we got our hands on it at the beginning of January and did some in-depth testing. It is a truly excellent and versatile top-of-the-line baby food machine with some important features. The Babymoov Duo Meal Station is the only baby food machine on this list that can support simultaneous and separate steaming and mixing, allowing you to start steaming another food (or continue steaming a plate) while mixing another. We have found this to be very useful when steaming two foods that require different amounts of time to steam. For example, we steam a plate of green beans and at the same time a plate of sweet potatoes: peas take about 4 minutes, but sweet potatoes take about 10 minutes (after steam starts). Thus, this system allows us to start mixing the peas while finishing steaming the sweet potatoes. This is great flexibility for busy kitchens. It also has a very large capacity, the largest on the list of the best baby food manufacturers, allowing us to prepare up to 9 cups of food at a time! This is equivalent to 25 meals for a baby, so this is important. If you don’t need to make something that big, you can use just a single-layer tray for one type of food (or two foods with the same cooking time), or you can stack the trays to separate two different types of food. It works very well for both smaller and larger jobs. The steamer is powerful and easy to use: add some water to the bottom until the lights go out, set the timer, and you’re ready to go.
The baby food blender is powerful, the blades are sharp and durable, and the blender itself has three speed settings. Its two differences from the Babymoov Nutribaby are its ability to steam and stir at the same time, as well as a three-speed blender. There’s also a beautiful LED screen and interface that we think is intuitive and easy to use. Both the steamer and blender parts are BPA-free (lead and phthalate-free) and dishwasher safe, making cleaning a breeze.
3. Evla’s Baby Food Machine
EVLA’s baby food maker is a tough new competition for Beaba and other products, and it offers great features but is about $30 cheaper than Beaba. Out of the box, we think everything feels very high quality and well made. There are a lot of junk baby food manufacturers on the market, so it’s nice to see high-quality products appear. We found it easy to use and follow the instructions, and if the written instructions are not clear, there are great video instructions on the Evla website. The features are great, including steaming, stirring (pureeing), reheating, thawing, and sanitizing. It also has a self-cleaning feature that helps you clean the blade after use without having to disassemble or touch the blade (and risk getting cuts), which is an excellent feature that adds to the convenience of cleaning. The water reservoir holds about 7-8 ounces of water and is very easy to clean – it’s large enough to hold your entire hand and sponge, making it less likely that items will be covered in mineral limescale, slime, or mold. The steaming basket and mixing cup can be washed on the top rack of the dishwasher, and all parts that come into contact with food are BPA-free. There are a few more things worth mentioning. When you turn it on, you need to press and hold the power button for about 3 seconds, which is a nice security feature, but also very helpful so that it doesn’t accidentally turn on when cleaning the beautiful digital screen on top.
When it comes to the screen, it’s very intuitive to use. The buttons are simple – clean (clean the blade after use – be sure to cover the spill-proof lid first), steam (retort the food in the basket) and disinfect (sterilize before first use, or sterilize the nipple and nipple). There are two other buttons, one is the automatic puree button, which will sense the resistance in the blender cup and mix the right amount (usually about a minute), and one is the pulse puree button in case you want to customize the puree in case it’s time to make a lumpy food (less time) or a smoother puree (more time). The capacity is about 12 ounces of food (a blender cup is about 600 ml), so it’s not the largest on the list, but it’s big enough for most situations. It only takes about 15 minutes to steam the vegetables (about 20 minutes for the meat) and another minute to stir, so you can definitely make some purees in a row – maybe 3 or 4 in an hour, which is pretty good.
4. Baby Brezza One Step Deluxe Baby Food Machine
When you’re ready to transition from steaming food to pureing food, most baby food manufacturers will involve the following workflow: remove the steaming basket, insert the puree blade, pour the steamed food into the bowl, and puree. It takes four steps from steaming to pureing. The Baby Brezza One Step Deluxe Baby Food Maker doesn’t need to be transferred after steaming – it really only takes one step! It achieves this by replacing the traditional clay blade with a wider blade with a steam hole, making homemade baby food at the touch of a button! For basic functions, it makes 3.5 cups of baby food, features four puree blades for steam-only, mix-only, and steam-and-mix modes, bowl and blade are dishwasher safe, and includes three reusable grocery bags and filling funnels. As an added bonus, all parts that come into contact with food are free of BPA, phthalates, PVC, lead, BPS, and cadmium, and the blades are stainless steel and the bowls are food-grade silicone and polypropylene.
The entire system of Baby Brezza is very intuitive and easy to use. The digital control panel is easy to control: one button for steam and mixing, one button for steam only, and one button for mixing only. There is also a green ring (start) and a red ring (stop) buttons. To steam and mix, you simply press the “Steam + Mix” button repeatedly to reach the desired timer duration (from 5 to 30 minutes in 5-minute increments) and press the green button to start the process. The system will steam for the time you choose, stir for 30 seconds, and then turn off. The steaming bowl is easy to clean, the tank is easy to add water (we recommend using only distilled water), everything is easy to clean (the bowl and blades can be put in the dishwasher). We love the accompanying recipe guide, which can help you determine how much food to put in, how small to cut, and how long to steam. The only downside is that the steam time tends to be a bit longer than suggested in the recipe, and you’ll need to adjust it to your liking and experience. Be aware that some foods will have excess water after steaming, especially fruits and zucchini. In these cases, you may need to separate the steaming and pureing so that the excess water can be poured out between the stages.
5. QOOC Mini Baby Food Machine
The baby food manufacturer is new to the U.S. market and is making a splash! With its small footprint and small capacity, it’s perfect for smaller kitchens, smaller batches of food, and less clutter on countertops. Its dimensions match its simplicity. Technically, it’s a 300-in-2 baby food machine, which means it can do the usual steaming and stirring, but it can also be reheated and thawed, which is basically just a steaming function for the other two purposes. Convenient, but not in any way different from most of the other products on this list. The relatively small capacity, about <> grams or <> cups, is the smallest of them all. It looks, feels, and functions very similarly to the Beaba Babycook, with a sleek understated shape and a large, easy-to-use button on the front and center. We found it very easy to use with one hand: you just turn the button to steam or mix, then press the button to get started. The lid, container, steaming basket and blades are dishwasher safe, and the blades pop out of the container for a more thorough cleaning. All components that come into contact with food are also BPA-free and do not contain lead or phthalates. Some of the other things we appreciated were the quiet motor, how easy it was to refill the tank, and how little space it took up on our (already crowded) kitchen counter! It’s small, but if that’s what you’re looking for, then it’s definitely a good choice.