Weaning Recipes - Chawanmushi for Babies 茶碗蒸し

Want to introduce egg to your baby's diet? Try making baby chawanmushi, it's easy and delicious and great platform to make baby start eating vegetables and meat as well.

All you need to do is remember that chawanmushi = 1 egg + 1 portion stock + other ingredients (meat, fish, vegetables). What I do to make my chawanmushi nutritious, is to steam the chicken or fish & vegetables first and use the stock produced from the first round of steaming to add to my egg. Mix the egg into the stock, then add the other ingredients and steam them all together in a beaker. I use a beaker as it's easy for me to gauge how much I'm going to feed baby for the day and I don't freeze cooked food as I believe in feeding baby freshly cooked foods everyday. It is also not necessary to add any salt or sugar as the chawanmushi is tasty enough with the 1 portion of stock to egg ratio. Anyway, it is best to let baby taste the natural/original taste of ingredients rather than to salt/sweet things up too much.

So far, my baby has enjoyed the following combinations of chawanmushi:
1. Salmon + carrot
2. Ngoh Fish
3. Chicken + broccoli
4. Soy milk + oatmeal
5. Sweet potato leaves + chicken
Basically once she likes the steamed eggs, it's easy to mix other stuff in and that helps to improve the nutritional value of the chawanmushi. I occasionally make crabmeat chawanmushi for myself too. Add some ikura on top and you get an adult version of this popular dish!
Happy cooking and experimenting!