Healthy mixed vegetable soup for babies, both infants, and toddlers. I introduced this soup to Eva when she said goodbye to regular baby vegetable purees and started craving for more flavored food.
Prepare the vegetables - Clean and peel potatoes, carrot, and sweet potato. Cube them. Cut the cauliflower into medium size florets. Add them to the salted lukewarm water for around 10 minutes. It will help to kill the worms inside cauliflower. Clean it thoroughly and drain the florets. Clean broccoli and cut the florets.
Melt the butter/ghee in a pressure cooker over low heat. Add all the ingredients except water - potato, sweet potato, carrot, broccoli, cauliflower, garlic, ginger, turmeric powder, jeera powder, garam masala and salt. Give a stir and cook it for 2 minutes. I used Instant Pot (electric pressure cooker) to make this soup. ** If you are using Instant Pot, cook it in SAUTE mode LOW setting.
Add water and pressure cook for 3 whistles. ** Incase of Instant Pot, close the Instant Pot lid, move the valve to SEAL and cook on MANUAL HIGH-PRESSURE setting for 5 minutes.
Once pressure is released, open the cooker lid. If there's excess water, keep it on medium flame. Let the excess water evaporate. In this soup, I puree the cooked vegetables. Keep enough water to blend the veggies. Switch off the flame. ** Incase of Instant Pot, once the timer goes off, either do a NATURAL PRESSURE RELEASE or a QUICK PRESSURE RELEASE after 10 minutes. Refer notes for instructions on natural and quick release. Evaporate the excess water in SAUTE mode NORMAL setting.
Let it cool down. Puree them in a blender. Enjoy!
Notes
Garam masala is optional. I only use homemade garam masala in this soup, where I exactly know the ingredients.
It's perfectly fine to introduce spices like cinnamon, cloves.. to the babies after 6 months.
Add salt if you have started giving salt to the baby. My baby, Eva refuses to have it without salt.
Use vegetables of your choice. I have also used beans and beetroot in this soup other than the vegetables listed.
You can add 1 or 2 teaspoon of infant formula milk (for babies less than 1 year) or cows milk (for babies above 1 year).
Instant Pot Natural & Quick Pressure Release - For natural pressure release, allow the float valve to drop off without doing anything. It would take some time, around 30 minutes or so. For quick pressure release, once the timer goes off, leave it as it is for 10 minutes. Then turn the valve from sealing to venting and allow the steam to release the pressure until the float valve drops off.