How to Make Fish Stew

Now, however confident you are in cooking at home for your self, you are not cooking for a baby whose immune system is not quite as strong as it would be once the baby has grown adult. So, little top tips on best practice, invest in some colored chopping boards so that you know you’re not mixing raw food with cooked food. Here, I’ve chosen a blue one for fish because it reminds me of the sea, so I know the blue chopping board is only of a use for raw fish. A really good top tip is to befriend your fish manga. And even soup markets have fish manga’s these days. So, go ahead and have a chat with them and explain you want some really nice cuts for your baby’s first taste of fish. They’ll also make sure that they feel it and choose a piece that has as few bones as possible. And they have it got removed all the bones for you but you’ll want to be confident that you’ve taken all the bones out. So, the best thing to do is with your clean hands, just feel the fish to see if you can feel any bones in it. And I can feel that there’s a little ridge of bones if you run your finger back within forwards along this line here. Now, if you like a bit of a struggle, you can use your fingernails to try and pull out the bones but it’s quite hard work. And this you should get it from your makeup bag as just you invest a new one but it really is worth in getting a pair of kitchen tweezers because they really help pull out the bones for you. So, grab some kitchen tweezers and you’ll find—take a little bit of a tug, you can pull the bones out. As you can, it’s a little bit fishy touch that one a bit. There’s a bone there. Okay. So, I’ve just checked all over this. It doesn’t feel like there’s anymore bones in it. As I’ll chop it, I’ll also look at for some more because this is your baby’s first taste of fish. We’re actually going to end up with quite a smooth puree so that the taste is the only thing that they’re having to learn how to get used to. And so, we’re going to just simply chop this into cubes around about two centimeters square. It’s fairly rough but it’s going to be cooking down, so the actual fish will flake up. And as I’m chopping, I can feel whether or not there are any bones lift in it which I can feel it on to me. I’ve got raw fish on my hands and raw fish on this knife. So, I want to make sure that I don’t use that with anything else that I’m going to be cooking with. So, I’m going to set aside the chopping board that I use for raw fish, keep the knife with it, and also wash my hands. Okay, so now let’s go on with the vegetables. You’re confident with this because I know you’ve been not winning your baby on vegetable purees already. So, the ingredients we’re going to add into this fish stew is carrot, potato, sweet broccoli, and parsley if you would like. You don’t have to put parsley but it just adds quite flavor to it. You can grate the carrot, sweetened potato, or I’m going to use just for speed I’m going to whisk through a food processor. Now, sweet can be quite big but you can get some small ones in the supermarket. I’m going to chop this just into slightly small bits before I put them through the processor. So, I’ve just got this on the grater attachment. Remember, we’re going to give this a little bit of a wheeze so that it becomes quite a smooth puree. We’re just going to make sure that it cooked quite nice and put the broccoli on as well. Now, I’ve deliberately chosen vegetables in this stew, the kind of vegetables that your child would like and probably all they’re going to taste for in the purees you’ve done in the first stage. If your baby didn’t like any things like sweet then just add another thing and like maybe sweet potatoes or something on those lines. I’m going to put those into the pan. I’m actually stirring the fish as well. Now, I’ve doubled the quantities that are in the recipe on the baby channel website because I want to show you the finished stew as a puree as well as something that’s great for an older child. I’m going to add in the fish at this stage. So, all the vegetables are still raw. So, stir in the fish, so it’s all mixed in. And then I’m going to add just enough water to cover it. As with all of the stage purees, I only add enough water to cover so that we could always add a little bit more water if starts to get dry. But then all of the water soluble vitamins are captured and mixed in with the food. Okay. So, let’s just get it cooking. Now, first of all I want to see this coming up to a nice bubbling boil and then I’m going to bring it down to a simmer. You need to cook it to a good simmer for at least 10 minutes. In those 10 minutes, the largest pieces of vegetables should be completely soft so you can squish it between your tongue and the roof of your mouth and the fish will go from looking slightly clear to being white and it already flaked up as well. Now, if you were cooking this for an adult, you’d like to keep some nice big pieces of fish in. But we really do want it to flake up because we’re going to blitz it to make it into a nice smooth puree. So, that’s coming to the boil. I’m actually going to chop some parsley. You may or may not want to add parsley but with all food for babies under 12 months, we don’t add salt. So, it’s quite nice to add some herbs to bring out some nice interesting flavors. We should cover that. Add as much parsley as you like. I’m just going to add a couple of sprigs, as always being washed. I’m going to take out some of the larger stems so there’s no risk of any little bit’s left in the puree. So, just keep the leaves. Scrunch it up as small as you can and chop it as finely as you can. Now, I’m going to keep that to one side and I’ll add in until the stew is almost cooked. In that way, you’re keeping flavor, that nice fresh flavor of the parsley and into the stew. Okay, so let’s check to see if it’s boiling and you can see it’s got a nice bubble going all the way through. I want to make sure the middle has come to a boil as well. Yeah, I know you can see, it’s actually really bubbling away nicely there which is perfect. So, I want you to just now reduce it down to a simmer. What I’m looking for in this kind of simmer is so that it’s—that a nice bubble happening all the way through it but not like to boil over. Take down a little bit more. Okay, it’s been bubbling away now for 10 minutes. So, I want to just check that the fish is really nicely cooked, very flaky, very soft, and the largest pieces of vegetable are nice and soft as well. So, the test I’m going to do is I’m going to take little piece out, make sure it’s cooling before I put it in, so it will not burn my mouth. And just check that it squishes between my tongue and the roof of my mouth. Let’s have a look first of all and see if I can find the largest piece of fish and it’s a little piece. The largest piece I’ve got left. Squish it with the back of the spoon so it really breaks up into little pieces—piece of vegetable, some broccoli as well and allow it to cool. So, it’s pretty good about—this about another minute. That broccoli is still got a little bit of bite to it which is perfect because I’m going to add the parsley now. So, I’m adding around about a teaspoon of chopped herbs, that’s the last minute. Get a good stir up. Now, because we’ve grated the pieces and chopped the fish really small, for an older child this is almost like a nice thick soup for a child. So, it would be perfect for them. But we’re looking at the very first tastes of the fish. So, we want turn this into a nice smooth puree. Now, I know when we’ve talked about purees and texture, it is the child so we want to introduce more texture. But with the food that’s quite unusual and new taste, then it’s quite nice to just go back to something really quite smooth so that they’re not having to cook with texture. They’re just really getting used to a new flavor. So, we’re going to put this into the jag and then give it a bit of a blitz. Because I don’t need it to be really, really smooth, they’ll be fine with just a hand blitzer. Take a look if no big bits. Okay, so we’ve got nice smooth fresh fish stew here which we can serve in baby’s favorite pot. It’s got a really lovely warm smell to it, slightly fishy but not really overpowering. It makes a lovely first taste of fish for baby. And add in a little bit of milk or some stock and a really lovely soup for you. Fresh Fish Stew!