Soup for Babies
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It is officially soup season! The air outside is crisp and cool, the leaves are slowly falling, and I have been craving cozy, comforting, and delicious soups. Soups and stews can offer incredibly nutrient-rich, healthy ways to serve a wide variety of soft, tender-cooked foods, which may be otherwise more difficult for babies to chew and manage in the mouth.
However, there are a few things to keep in mind when serving soup to your baby. In this post, you’ll find information about the benefits of soup for babies, my top tips for safely serving soup to babies and toddlers, and my favorite baby-friendly, healthy soup recipes that work well as meals for the entire family.
What are the benefits of serving soup to babies?
Soup is a great food for babies as young as 6 months old. Soup is also a top baby food choice for baby-led feeding, as it can be tailored to meet your baby's needs while offering a variety of flavors and textures.
Whether you are taking a baby-led weaning approach to starting solids or spoon-feeding, soups can be wonderful first food for babies who are showing signs of readiness for solids, especially if the ingredients are iron-rich and paired with a food high in vitamin C. Some families prefer to stick with pureed soups, while others may want to give a preloaded spoon with soup or deconstruct the soup on the plate or tray.
Soups can provide a variety of textures to learn to navigate, from smooth and pureed to chunkier textures. They can also help expose your baby to various flavors and ingredients. You can include different vegetables, meats, grains, and spices* in the soup, allowing your baby to learn to enjoy eating vegetables and expand their palate, which helps reduce the likelihood of picky eating.
Warm soup can be particularly soothing and hydrating, which may be helpful during colder months or if your baby is feeling unwell. Some soups, especially those with homemade broths or stocks, can aid digestion due to their gentle, easily digestible ingredients.
Many soups are also family-friendly and are idea options for family meals, which can help your baby feel included in mealtime routines and promote healthy eating habits by allowing them to observe and mimic the behavior of older family members eating the same foods.
For families who follow a vegetarian or vegan diet, there are also plenty of plant-based soups and stews including broccoli soup, sweet potato soup, tomato soup, vegetable soup, and pumpkin soup that use vegetable stock* as a base.
Top Tips for Serving Soup to Babies
As a pediatric registered dietitian specializing in infant feeding, I get a lot of questions from parents and caregivers about how to safely serve soup to babies and toddlers. Here are some guidelines on how to serve soup for babies:
1. Consider the sodium content: Many soups (both store-bought and homemade) can be higher in sodium than is ideal for babies. When preparing soups at home, start with a cup of water or so, or a low-sodium broth* as the liquid base to keep sodium content at a minimum. Consider adding salt and pepper and any higher sodium sauces after a portion has been served for your baby.
2. Use age-appropriate textures: Safety-test the size and texture of soup and stew ingredients before serving; each piece should be easily squishable between your thumb and forefinger and about the size of a chickpea* or Cheerio; smash beans before serving to a baby.
3. Consider making your own: When you prepare homemade soup for your baby, it allows you to control over what and how much of each ingredient goes into the soup.
5. Monitor cooking time and consistency: When making soup at home, cook the vegetables or meat until they are very tender and can be easily mashed or blended to a smooth consistency; try using the slow cooker to turn tougher cuts of meat into soft-textured, tender, moist meats that easily fall apart.
6. Consider safety: Never leave your baby unattended while eating, so you can monitor for any signs of choking; always check the temperature of soups and stews before serving and ensure that they are slightly warm rather than hot.
7. Limit the amount of soup offered: For babies under the age of 12 months, be aware that breast milk and/or formula are the main source of daily nutrients and we don’t want to compromise intake of either; limit intake of soup to no more than about 1 cup per day (same goes for any other thin liquids including broths).
8. Try deconstructing soup: A simple way that babies under 12 months can benefit from the amazing nutrients in a hearty soup is to deconstruct the soup by sifting out the soft pieces and serving them without the broth as finger foods for self-feeding with hands.
9. Allow your baby to practice with a spoon or fork: Try offering the soup pieces in a bowl with a spoon and let your baby practice loading the spoon* and self-feeding; for babies who are using a palmar grasp, try offering soft pieces of beans, meats, or vegetables on a preloaded fork for self-feeding.
Watch this 13 month old cutie eat soup with a preloaded spoon!
Best Soup Recipes for Babies
If you’re looking for some delicious, healthy, family-friendly soup recipes that work well for babies and toddlers (sometimes with some minor modifications), I’ve got you covered!
Butternut Squash and Apple Soup
This tasty soup from Andrea at Dietetic Directions is high in beta-carotene, which gives vegetables like squash and pumpkin their yellow/orange color and helps strengthen your baby’s immune system, vision, and skin. It is a quick and easy fall recipe to make in your instant pot this season.
This nutritious and savory blend of broccoli, spinach, onions, cashews, and seasonings is an excellent way to introduce babies to the flavors of green vegetables in a purée that doesn’t mask the green veggies with sweet fruit flavors like most green veggie blends but rather presents them along with savory seasonings that help build a baby’s repertoire of accepted foods. To help keep your baby’s sodium intake low, you may want to reserve a portion for your baby before adding the salt and capers, but don’t sweat it if it’s too much trouble.
Whenever I make this traditional Greek egg and lemon soup at home, my girls tell me the flavor and texture reminds them of their Memere (my mother) who makes it regularly. She adds chicken to this soup as an added protein source that increases the nutrient value and flavor, as well as brown cooked rice. When serving to a baby, omit the salt, use a low-sodium chicken broth, chop the carrots rounds into quarters, and serve the chicken shredded rather than chopped.
Lemon Tahini Lentil Soup (see photo at the top of the page!)
Nutrient-dense, packed with iron, brimming with nutrients and bursting with flavor, my vegan, gluten-free soup recipe acts more like a stew and does a good job of sticking to a preloaded spoon! It also offers a great way to serve sesame (a top 9 allergen) to babies early and often, which may help reduce the risk of developing a sesame allergy.
Pressure Cooker Chicken Noodle Soup
What’s not to love about a hearty, family-friendly soup that is ready in 30 minutes? Packed with flavor thanks to the fresh herbs, this soup recipe was created by Megan Byrd, RDN and works well for babies when the chicken is diced into small, chick-pea sized bites.
Have you tried kabocha squash (Japanese pumpkin)? I loved using it as the base of this soup because it’s rich in nutrients (beta carotene, vitamin C, iron, calcium, some B vitamins, potassium, and magnesium to name a few) and the taste and texture are similar to that of roasted chestnuts. If serving to an infant, skip the salt and pistachio topping and use a low-sodium broth.
Copycat Olive Garden Minestrone Soup
Check out this healthy, nutrient-dense vegetable minestrone soup made with zucchini, carrots, spinach, tomatoes, cannellini beans and minestrone pasta in a tasty Parmesan broth, created by Julie Andrews, RDN. If serving to an infant, be sure to chop the veggies into chickpea-sized bites, smash the cannellini beans before serving, omit the salt, and use low-sodium versions of the stock and canned tomatoes.
If your baby will soon be starting solids, make sure to download my FREE Baby-Led Feeding Essentials Checklist, which provides my favorite versions of the few things you really need during this process and none of the fluff you don't. Plus, you'll get my top 12 tips for successful baby-led feeding meals as a part of the download.
More importantly, if your baby is ready to start solids and you’d like for someone you trust to map out the entire first 12 weeks of your baby’s solid food-feeding journey, check out my Safe & Simple 12-Week Meal Plan! This guide includes over 30 recipes, weekly shopping lists, tons of balanced baby meals, a complete plan for top allergen introduction, & lots of guidance (with photos) on how to safely serve each food.
Thanks for reading!
