Best Blenders for Making Baby Food
These blenders make a smooth purée but also come in handy long after your baby outgrows the “mush” phase
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Dedicated baby food makers are good at puréeing and mashing but they can be expensive, especially considering they aren’t used for long and get tossed, lost, or donated once your baby graduates to solid foods. A blender that excels at puréeing, though, will not only whip up mushy peas and sweet potatoes for your little one but also blend soups, smoothies, and more for the whole family.
In our lab tests, we use raw vegetables to assess a blender’s ability to purée. An excellent rating means it can produce food with no chunks or stringy fibers.
Making baby food, however, may require additional steps depending on the blender you’ll be using. The Department of Agriculture advises caregivers to avoid giving babies uncooked foods. That pertains not only to meat, fish, and eggs but also to vegetables and fruit. As an added benefit, heating these foods can also make them more digestible for infants. So generally, you’ll want to cook the food first before puréeing.
Some blenders can heat food as they purée it, and several of the models highlighted below are capable of doing so past a safe temperature of 165° F. Vitamix blenders, for example, generate heat using the friction between the blades and the ingredients. “Our test recipe—broccoli soup—reaches 165° F in just 5 minutes and 45 seconds,” says Hanna Bury, a spokesperson for the company.
This may tempt busy parents to skip the precooking step, but our safety experts advise using extra care. “If you are using one of the blenders that cook, I would make sure the product after blending gets to the proper temperature prior to cooling and feeding using a thermometer,” says James E. Rogers, PhD, Consumer Reports’ director of food safety research and testing.
Here are four top-performing full-sized blenders, listed in alphabetical order, that will help you make nutritious food for your baby and the rest of the family. All of them are whizzes at puréeing, excel in CR’s tests for durability, and aren’t a hassle to use or clean.
While the high-performing blenders at the top of our ratings cost hundreds of dollars, we also suggest some solid performers that won’t put a dent in your baby’s college fund. There’s one major factor to keep in mind while you’re shopping though: Very few blenders earn better than a middling score in CR’s noise tests, so you might not want to operate one while your baby is sleeping.
Consumer Reports members can check out our blender ratings for more options and our blender buying guide for shopping advice. And because one of the main reasons for making baby food at home is affordability, check out our list of the best blenders for $100 or less if price is a major consideration.
The Cuisinart Hurricane Pro 3.5 Peak HP CBT-2000 blender excels at puréeing and making smoothies, plus it’s a breeze to use. It doesn’t come with any accessories or a removable blade (less clutter for your cabinets) but it’s easy to clean in general, and its jar is dishwasher-safe. It weighs 11 pounds, though—on the high end for this list—so you may want to save your energy by leaving it on the counter instead of storing it away.
The Ninja Professional Plus Kitchen System BN801 aces our tests for puréeing and durability, plus it excels in our convenience evaluations, which are based on ease of cleaning, ease of pouring, jar weight, and clarity of jar markings and controls. This nine-cup model comes with a personal blender attachment, two 24-ounce cups, a food chopper attachment, and a dough blade (not that you’ll have the energy to make bread exactly, but for future reference). Ninja as a brand earns very good scores for predicted reliability and owner satisfaction based on Consumer Reports’ 2021 and 2023 surveys of 30,076 members who purchased blenders between 2015 and 2023.
The small but powerful 1,600-watt 4.2-cup Ninja TWISTi High Speed Duo SS151 shows excellent puréeing performance in CR’s tests, plus it’s the least expensive model on this list. It comes with a tamper built into the lid of the main jar and, like the model above, comes with a personal blender attachment. A jar half the size of some standard full-sized blenders, plus the 18-ounce and 24-ounce personal blender cups that come with it, mean you’re less likely to wind up with dozens of tiny servings of peas or prunes.
The CR Recommended Vitamix 5200 offers the excellent puréeing performance and durability you might expect from Vitamix but for nearly $200 less than some of the company’s other models. Plus, it’s capable of heating food. Vitamix as a brand receives excellent scores for reliability and owner satisfaction, according to our member surveys.
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