baby led weaning – Copycat nurture life Chicken Meatballs with Mini Pasta

Nurture Life definitely has a niche in the baby led weaning market – direct to door meals for your little one. Their chicken meatballs with mini pasta is a hit with most babies due to the simple ingredients.

Jump to Recipe

If you have looked up baby led weaning recipes online, you have probably seen Nurture Life’s easy finger foods.  I find the price point to be a little too much, since I rarely pay this much for one of my own lunches at $5.99 per container. 

The chicken meatballs with mini pasta dish is SO easy and requires so few ingredients! If you are looking for variety, this can be made with my copycat spaghetti and alfredo and it can save you tons compared to ordering Nurture Life! 

quick baby pasta dish 

Nurture Life uses a lot of the same ingredients across their meals so this includes ingredients that I also use in my Spaghetti and Alfredo copycat recipes. See these posts here.

I was able to spend under $3.50 to create 9 meals! and I used the extra ingredients to create two additional batches of other baby led weaning recipes so that my baby can have some variety in the meals he eats. 

A few changes in my recipe vs the original are: 1) Opted for chicken chunks instead of chicken meatballs. I already had the chicken on hand from prior recipes. 2) Since the meatballs had cheese and seasoning in them, I added the cheese and seasoning separately.

Overall, it’s about the same nutritional makeup but so much easier than making meatballs from scratch. Plus, my baby likes the texture better than meatballs.

How to 

I purchased Italian cheese, Ditalini pasta and grilled all natural chicken patties. The seasonings I already had on hand. The ingredients were about $30, but as I mentioned earlier, I have two additional recipes that are baby led weaning friendly you can make to stretch these ingredients.

I only used $3.41 to create 9 servings!

1. Start a medium pot of water about half full on high on the stove to bring it to a boil for the pasta.
2. As the water boils, cook 2 chicken patties using the microwave instructions then place in the fridge to cool in bowls.
3. Once the pasta comes up to a boil, place 1/3 of the box of pasta in the boiling water and turn down the water to medium high. The noodles cook for 11 minutes so that they are extra soft and baby friendly.
4. While the pasta cooks, cut up the chicken into finger bite sized pieces. 
5. After the pasta finishes cooking, strain the water out and do a cold water rinse on the pasta. Even though I wouldn’t normally recommend this, I didn’t want the pasta to continue to cook and it needed to be cold for placing in containers.
6. Get whatever containers that you have on hand that are freezer friendly. Put the chicken on the bottom and sprinkle some cheese and seasoning on top. Add the noodles and sprinkle some cheese on top and extra seasoning if desired. I used only garlic and onion powder as I knew my baby loves these flavors.

• 1/4 cup Italian style shredded cheese
• 1/3 box Ditalini Barilla pasta
• 2 Don Farms grilled chicken patties
• Onion, thyme, Italian seasoning and garlic powder – to taste
• 

9 meals in 20 minutes!

These last about 5 days in the fridge and up to a month in the freezer! I recommend serving with your baby’s favorite veggie. Avocado is a hit with this at our house! These jars are great container options that are really affordable and reusable too.

I was able to fill 9 containers (the bowl is 2 containers) in 20 minutes under $3.50! That’s over a 90% savings compared to Nurture Life!