Slow-Braised Beef Brisket Strips with Sweet Potato
Allergen lists cover the priority allergens in the recipe as written. Always check your own ingredient labels, and introduce each new allergen on its own first.
Ingredients
- 400 g (14 oz) beef brisket or chuck, trimmed of hard fat
- 1 medium sweet potato (~250 g), peeled — cut two thirds into chunks for the sauce and reserve one third as fat finger-length wedges (about 8 cm long, two adult fingers wide) for 6-8 month finger feeding
- 1 small onion (~80 g), finely diced
- 250 ml (1 cup) no-salt-added beef or vegetable stock (check the label — many stocks hide salt, and some contain celery)
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1/4 tsp sweet paprika (not smoked, not hot)
- 1/4 tsp dried thyme
Method
- 1. Preheat the oven to 150°C (300°F), fan off.
- 2. Pat the brisket dry and rub with the paprika and thyme. Heat the olive oil in an ovenproof casserole and brown the meat on all sides, about 6 minutes total.
- 3. Add the diced onion, the sweet potato CHUNKS (hold the wedges back for now) and the no-salt-added stock. The liquid should come roughly halfway up the meat.
- 4. Cover tightly and braise in the oven for 2 hours 45 minutes.
- 5. Tuck the reserved sweet potato wedges down into the liquid and braise a further 40-45 minutes, until the beef pulls apart with gentle pressure from two forks and both the chunks and the wedges mash with no resistance. Lift the wedges out whole and set them aside — these are the 6-8 month finger food, so they must not be mashed.
- 6. Lift the meat out and rest for 10 minutes. Mash the sweet potato chunks and the onion into the cooking liquid to make a light, spoonable sauce — no slippery onion strands should be left whole.
- 7. Find the direction of the muscle fibres, then slice ACROSS the grain (at right angles to the fibres) into soft strips. Cutting across the grain leaves short, easily-crushed fibres instead of long stringy ones; never cut with the grain for a baby.
- 8. Squash-test every piece — meat strips and the reserved sweet potato wedges alike — between your thumb and forefinger. Anything that does not flatten easily goes back into the sauce to cook longer. Cool to lukewarm and moisten the meat well with the sauce.
- 9. Refrigerate leftovers within 2 hours and use within 2 days, or freeze in portions for up to 1 month.
How to serve by age
6–8 months
Serve soft-braised strips cut finger-length (about 8-10 cm long) and roughly two adult fingers wide, so a good portion sticks out the top of a closed fist — this suits the palmar (whole-hand) grasp, where baby rakes food into the whole palm. Alongside, serve one of the reserved sweet potato wedges, kept whole at finger length (about 8 cm) and cooked until it squashes with no resistance. Every strip and wedge must squash easily between your thumb and forefinger before it reaches the tray.
9–12 months
Now that the pincer grasp (thumb + forefinger) is developing, shred the brisket into soft 1 cm pea-sized nuggets and dice the sweet potato into 1 cm cubes, spread across the tray so baby can practise picking up one piece at a time. Keep offering a few larger 8 cm strips too for babies who still prefer to fist-feed.
Paediatric note
Red meat is the single most bioavailable source of iron for a weaning baby — the heme iron in beef is absorbed at roughly 15-35%, several times better than the non-heme iron in plants, and it also boosts absorption of any non-heme iron eaten in the same meal. Long, slow, moist braising is what makes beef safe at this age: it breaks down connective tissue so the fibres crush rather than stay in a rubbery lump. Use a genuinely no-salt-added stock — a baby under 12 months should have no added salt at all.
Source guidance: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/baby/weaning-and-feeding/
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