Paprika Chicken Recipe

Not the prettiest looking of my recipes but definitely one of the tastiest. Can be served with jacket potatoes (I always do jacket sweet potatoes for Isabella because of the higher nutritional content) or pasta. If you've got enough left over sauce you can, get two meals out of this by serving with jacket potatoes for tea and then using the leftover sauce with pasta for dinner the next day.

This is a great dish for different weaning stages as its easily puréed or can be cut into small chunks for baby to (somewhat messily) feed themselves.

Serves 2-3 adults and 1 baby.

Ingredients

• 2 chicken breast fillets
• 1 clove of garlic
• 500ml single cream
• 500ml chicken stock (made using a Boots baby organic stock cube as this has virtually no salt in as oppose to regular stock cubes that have a high salt content)
• 4tsp paprika
• 4tsp dried mixed herbs
• 50g grated cheese
• 500ml boiling water

Method

1. Dice or crush the garlic and place in a measuring jug.
2. Add the stock cube, paparika, herbs and water to the jug and stir till dissolved.
3. Dice the chicken and place in an oven proof dish.
4. Pour the stock mixture over the chicken then add the cream. Gently stir (so that the sauce doesn't slop over the sides) until the cream and stock mixture are combined.
5. Bake in a preheated oven at 180C for 40 minutes.
6. Removed from the oven and sprinkle over the cheese (most of the cheese will sink into the sauce so don't worry about this). 
7. Return to the oven for a further 20 minutes then serve.
8. If you are keeping the leftover​ sauce, pour it into an airtight container and keep in the fridge.

Isabella feeding herself paprika chicken and sweet potato chunks.

Hello and welcome

Cooking for a baby means learning to cook again and cooking from scratch where you used to just buy shop bought. Babies can only have less than a gram of salt a day and a lot of cooking products, recipes and basic practise we take for granted in everyday cooking have far too much salt in them, such as boiling vegetables in salted water, shop bought pasta sauces, stocks and gravies.

When I first thought about cooking for my little girl the idea that I couldn't use gravy/stock or boil potatoes in salted water boggled my mind. Cooking potatoes without salt, it just didn't seem right, going against the very principal of osmosis, how was it to be done? How would I stop food tasting bland if I didn't add salt?

This blog aims to compile my no added salt, no added sugar culinary successes to help other parents find ways to create home cook meals that the whole family, particularly baby, can enjoy. All recipes in this blog and been tried and tested by my 8 month old daughter, Isabella, to make sure they are baby friendly. Isabella currently doesn't have any teeth and has no problem eating any of these foods, so they are ideal for babies with or without teeth.

As you'll see these recipes contain no added salt, but salt does natural occur within ingredients and I can make no account of the combined nutrition values in each recipe.

I hope you find this blog useful and I love to hear from other parents about their own baby friendly recipes.

Kirsty