Guest Review: Beaba Babycook

The day I found out I was pregnant I went out and bought myself a Beaba Babycook machine. Strange, I know, especially since I didn’t buy a diaper, piece of furniture, or a stitch of clothing for at least 5 more months. But, ever since we decided to jump on the kiddo bandwagon I had this fantasy of wandering around the farmer’s market with my baby snug in a sling picking out organic produce, and then lovingly making all of his or her food while classical music played in the background. Think Diane Keaton in ‘Baby Boom,’ but without all the snow.

As it turned out, my girl hated being in a sling, and despite my best intentions, we never made it to a single farmer’s market. And, well, the most classical music that gets played in our house is Bruce Springsteen, circa 1982. But, my commitment to making my girl’s food remained, and so I pulled out the Babycook and headed to Whole Foods the day she hit six months old.
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Based on a 4 star rating -

Design/Functionality ***: The Babycook is a French baby-food maker and the concept is totally ingenious. Instead of steaming or boiling the food in one contraption and then transferring it to a food processor or blender for pureeing, everything is done in one neat little compact machine. You peel and chop whatever you’re cooking, and place it in the steamer basket, which then fits perfectly into the main bowl. Add the appropriate amount of water to the separate steam compartment and flip a switch (the water never touches your food). Ten to fifteen minutes later you have perfectly tender grub. Dump it out of the steamer basket back into the main bowl, flip the switch the other way and puree. Eureka! You have homemade baby food. You can also use it to warm and/or defrost food. The only thing to wash is the steamer basket, main bowl, and maybe a cutting board.

I am an avid cook and I loathe washing the food processor bowl and parts so much (all those nooks and crannies!) that I tend to stay away from recipes that require its use. The fact that the Babycook provides me with the ability to make my girl’s food without the dreaded food processor, makes it worth its weight in gold.

The Babycook is an incredibly functional piece of kitchen equipment. It is easy to use and serves its intended function well. However, there are a handful of things I would change about it if I could:
- The main bowl and steamer basket are relatively small. This is fine until you want to make big batches of food for freezing. For example, you can only fit the equivalent of about two large pears in the bowl at one time.
- You can’t flip the switch to puree and then walk away--you have to hold it the entire time. Not a huge deal, but as someone who tends to use it at 11:30 at night while trying to do 12 other things, it would be nice to be able to multi-task while pureeing.
- You fill the steamer compartment with water at either the ‘2’ or ‘3’ level depending on the food. There is an enclosed instructional booklet with a chart of foods and their corresponding water level needs. However, the chart is very limited. Anything beyond the very basic foods (apples, carrots, etc.) and you have to use your best guess as to how much water you should use.

Style ****: The Babycook is sleek and compact and won’t take up a lot of space either on your countertop or in a kitchen cabinet. There are very few parts to lose, which in my house these days is a huge plus!

Price **: At about $150, the Babycook is a bit spendy. Personally, I think it is definitely worth the price tag because it saves me time and the agony of cleaning the food processor. Others may find it to be an unnecessary extravagance (you can make perfect baby food using tools you probably already have in your kitchen right now). Another thing to keep in mind is that there is only about a 4 month window that a baby is eating pureed food. Once your little one moves onto finger and ‘table’ food, the Babycook becomes somewhat obsolete. That being said, it would be a great item to add to a registry or give as a gift, and hopefully the price will get better as more places start carrying it.

Overall ***: Making my own baby food hasn’t been as simple as I expected it to be. While it is not inherently difficult, it can be extremely time consuming—especially when your kid starts really eating solid food right at the same time you decide to go back to work… The Babycook has saved me a lot of time and a lot of frustration (did I mention how much I hate cleaning the food processor?), and I have enjoyed using it a great deal. I have a boxful of pricey baby products that seemed like such a good idea in theory, but not so much in practice. The Babycook is definitely NOT one of them.

~~One thing to note is that there has been some controversy as to whether or not the main bowl and/or steamer basket is BPA free. Apparently the ‘official’ yet confusing statement from Williams-Sonoma is that the Babycook “does not contain PVC and therefore will not leach bisphenol a.” Several organizations have apparently done independent investigations however, and have concluded that the Babycook is indeed safe and BPA free (for the whole story check out this link.