Baby cereal (Cereal + milk/water) is a top choice when introducing solid food to babies. It’s nutritious, delicious, and easy for your baby to digest. In one of my previous blogs about baby food, I spoke about how my kids were first introduced to solid food through cereal. There is a variety of baby cerelac in the market, some of them even claim to be completely natural and organic. But when it came to my babies, I didn’t want to risk it one bit and hence, made my own cereal. Here is a homemade cerelac recipe which is also popularly known as Sathu Maavu in India.
DIY recipe for homemade cerelac!
You can customise your baby’s cereal mix with ingredients that you think will best suit your baby. Avoid anything that your baby might be allergic to and use only fresh ingredients for this recipe to ensure it’s safe and healthy.
Homemade cerelac ingredients:
- 1 ½ cup white or brown rice
- ½ cup of Horsegram
- 1 cup black urad dal
- ½ cup masoor dal
- 1 cup roasted gram
- ½ cup moong dal
- 3 tsp chopped almonds
- 2 tsp chopped cashews
- ½ tsp powdered cardamom
How to make the powder:
- Roast all the ingredients separately until they are done. Roast them on low flame to ensure they don’t burn.
- Once the ingredients have cooled off. Grind them into a fine powder in a mixer.
- Sift the ground mixture to get a fine powder consistency.
- Store the powder in an airtight container.
Making the baby cereal:
- Add two tbsp of the powder to ¾ cups of water.
- Cook it on low flame and keep stirring to ensure there are no lumps.
- Let the mixture cook for about two minutes.
- You can also add some breast milk to the baby cereal once it has cooled down.
Feeding tips
- Feed the cereal to the baby in small quantities for three consecutive days. If the baby does not show any allergic symptoms, increase the quantity and continue feeding.
- You can add jaggery or date paste as a sweetener to the baby cereal.
- Add mashed fruits to the mixture as the baby grows.
Storage tips:
- You can store the powder in an air-tight container at room temperature for about a month.
- If refrigerated, the mixture can be stored for 2-4 months. But I highly recommend you make small batches of it every month instead of storing it for a long time.
Why homemade cerelac?
Choosing to make my own cereal at home was a personal choice but it was backed by a lot of factual reasoning. Here is why I think parents should consider homemade cereal over store-bought one:
- There are no chemicals or additional preservatives in homemade cereal which is not a guarantee with store-bought one.
- You can customise the cereal according to the baby’s requirements.
- It also works out cheaper in the longer run.
Have you tried making Sathu Maavu at home? What was your experience? Let us know in the comments below!
Here are some more baby food recipes you should try out!
