KidCo Baby Steps Food Mill, with Carrying Case , 1 food mill
by KidCo
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List Price: Our Price: $10.10 You Save: $4.89 (33%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $10.00 (click here) Category: Baby Product See more product details |
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Baby Products Reviews of KidCo Baby Steps Food Mill, with Carrying Case , 1 food mill
Customer Review: Gets the job done for really soft foods.
Summary: 3 Stars
Kidco food mill gets the job done if you are using really soft foods.
I was excited to find a food mill that was small, seemed easy to use, and was a good price. I didn't hesitate to buy it despite some of the bad reviews it received here on amazon.
I just bought this the other day at Babies R Us and it was around $12. It has a plastic grater that it, or should I say YOU push the food through and a surgical steel blade that it used to move the food through the plastic grate.
I first used it on peas and carrots. The peas milled up just fine but the carrots didn't even make it though. The carrots weren't over cooked, I'd rather not over cook vegetables for my son to help retain most of the nutrients. So the carrots were a bust. The peas milled up well but were the consistency of mushy rice, and in no way compared to a stage 2 baby food as some reviews have stated. It was much lumpier. Maybe if the peas were well done it may have been smoother. There again I run in to nutrition retention.
If your food is very overcooked anyway, then it's probably just as easy to mush it yourself.
It's very easy to load the food into. Be sure it's well drained or it can leak. It's easily cleaned just pull it apart and wash or run in the dishwasher.
PROS:
1. Will grind well cooked food very easily
2. Easy to use and clean
3. Convenient feeding bowl attached
4. Compact size and easy take-a-long
CONS:
1. Only grinds "overcooked" food easily
2. You need to be extremely strong to push harder food through it
3. Very chunky texture of ground food
4. Won't grind meat
5. Comes with a hard serving spoon
All in all this seems like a fair deal considering the price is 12-15 dollars. I don't feel it was a complete waste of money and I don't feel it was a great buy either.
Customer Review: does what it claims to do
Summary: 4 Stars
The food mill is very handy. I didn't bother using it with my first two kids (I'd received one as a hand-me-down from a friend). It seemed to be too much hassle. In fact, it's really simple. I use it daily with my third child and wish I'd experimented with it a few years ago. Our pediatrician encourages us to give our child what we eat, not to depend on Gerber or Beech Nut too much. The problem is that it's difficult to mash (with a spoon or fork) foods like banana, avocado, potato, small curd cottage cheese and other soft foods to the consistency that my child will eat (super smooth). This food grinder does that for you. It is really easy to clean and simple to tote around. I'll even mill several foods during one sitting, cleaning it between food types - it's that easy to take apart, clean and reassemble.
In response to other reviews on this site, you can put cooked chicken into it, or crisp apple, but these won't become as smooth as yogurt. For that, you'd have to add water to the chicken, possibly add some other blending agent like potato, and use an electric blender. For apple or carrots, you'd need to cook it before you could put it into the mill and it would become smooth (like applesauce). Milling foods like corn and peas will probably result in some residual solid bits (the skin of the pea or kernel). To completely rid the food of that, you'd have to use a seive; even an electric blender would yield some solid bits.
This product is probably most useful for children between the ages of 6 months and 1 year.
Customer Review: Loving this so far!
Summary: 5 Stars
I purchased the baby food grinder after reading reviews from other users. I wanted a quick way to make food for my 7 month old. I got it yesterday and have LOVED it so far! I dropped 1/2 a banana and 1/2 a strawberry in it for a healthy puree to mix with her oatmeal for breakfast. For lunch, I ground up some broccoli and carrots cooked really soft. She has loved both items and she generally hates packaged baby food bananas and carrots. This was pretty easy to use and definitely easy to clean. The blade is not sharp (it sort of mashes and grinds rather than cutting) so you don't have to worry about cutting yourself on sharp parts. I do think I will probably purchase a food processor or another method for large-scale baby food making for freezing. Even if you stuff the grinder full, I don't think it would make more than about 2 meals at a time. Perfect for super-fresh and on-the-go, but not quite ideal for making a week's worth of food at a time. Exactly what we were looking for!
Pros:
Easy to use
Easy to clean (just pop the parts apart and wash with dish soap or put in the dishwasher)
Carrying case makes it very portable
Cons:
Would not be good for large quantities as it generally makes enough for about one or two feedings at a time.
Customer Review: Not the greatest
Summary: 3 Stars
I bought this food mill at the same time as the KidCo electric food mill. While the electric food mill is awesome, I was not impressed with this hand-cranked kind. It did the job, but here are the pros and cons:
Pros:
- It's great to travel with. No electricity needed.
Cons:
- It is difficult to press down hard enough to maintain the right pressure and crank at the same time.
- The angle is awkward for pressing the shaft down.
- If the food you're blending isn't the right softness, the tiny holes clog and you have to press down even harder - not an easy task.
- Once the food is blended (I've only had great success with bananas), it is difficult to twist the center plate out as it's so slippery.
- You think you've rinsed it out really well, but when it comes out of the dishwasher, it's still dirty in the little threads where the top plate screws into it.
- The one metal part in this mill has started to rust after only a few washings.
Overall, this mill is okay to travel with and if you have nothing else, but you're much better off just getting the electric food mill which not only does the job, but it also makes beautiful purees.
Customer Review: The only baby food tool you'll need.
Summary: 5 Stars
This food mill is so fantastic and here's why:
1. It's portable.
2. It's easy to clean.
3. It makes portions that are just the right size.
For my first daughter I made large batches of baby food in our blender and froze them...and she wouldn't eat it at all. Maybe I was doing something wrong in the reheating process but she would only eat the food when it was fresh so I just gave up and started buying baby food.
With our second daughter, I wasn't going to make the same mistake. I came so close to buying the Beaba Babycook (steamer/blender combo...expensive) but after reading on the Soulemama blog about this food mill, I decided I should try it. It's such a reasonable price that I figured it wouldn't be a big deal if it didn't work out. Well, it turned out to be exactly what we needed! I cook a meal for our family and put one or more of the items in the food mill to feed to our daughter. Right now she's eating only one food at a time but soon I'll be adding more elements of our meal into her food mill for her to enjoy...so simple. Plus, if we eat a restaurant or travel to visit family, I can slip it right into our diaper bag.
I highly recommend this food mill.