Why My First Smashed Baby Potatoes Were a Complete Disaster

I was literally chiseling carbonized potato skins off my one good baking sheet with a butter knife when I realized the internet had completely lied to me again. It was 2019, my oldest son Beau was about eight months old, and I had just attempted my very first trendy smashed baby potatoes recipe because some influencer in a pristine, flour-dusted kitchen said it was the "perfect first food." Bless her heart, but she conveniently left out the part where if you boil them in ocean-water levels of salt and bake them until they shatter like glass, your infant is going to gag so hard they projectile vomit pureed carrots all over your only clean dining room rug.

I’m typing this while staring at a laundry basket that’s been sitting in my hallway for three business days, so I’m just gonna be real with you right now. Feeding a human being under the age of one is terrifying enough without trying to recreate a five-star restaurant side dish. But as a mom of three under five living in rural Texas, I rely heavily on potatoes because they're about three dollars a bag at H-E-B and they keep my children full enough to stop asking for snacks for at least twenty minutes. You just have to know how to actually make them safe for a baby to eat, rather than safe for an Instagram photo.

The great salt debate and why I ignore the internet

thing is that makes me want to pull my hair out when I look up cooking advice online for my kids. Every single culinary website out there tells you to heavily salt your boiling water because "potatoes absorb the flavor from the inside out." Yeah, well, my doctor gently reminded me at our six-month checkup that babies have tiny, under-developed kidneys that basically go into shock if you hand them adult levels of sodium, so dumping a quarter cup of kosher salt into the pot is a massive, absolute no-go in our house.

I don't know the exact milligrams of potassium or whatever nutritional magic potatoes possess, but my doctor seemed to think the vitamin C in them was somehow important for iron absorption, assuming my child actually swallows it instead of throwing it at the dog. So, we boil them plain. Completely, utterly, devastatingly plain. I pull out a few plain ones for the baby to mangle, and then I hit the rest of the pan with Lawry's seasoning salt and entirely too much butter for me and my husband. It's really not that deep, and you don't need to overthink it.

Honestly, just squish the flesh out with a fork and leave the tough skins on your own plate if you're that worried about them gagging on a peel.

My three-year-old middle child refuses to say the whole word anyway and just aggressively demands "baby po" at dinner time, or sometimes just "baby p" if she's really in a hurry to go back to destroying the playroom. When she asks for baby po, she means the squishy, buttery kind, not the salted-to-death crunch-fest the internet wants you to make.

Getting the texture right without losing your mind

My grandma used to say that a potato is the only thing standing between a mother and a total breakdown on a Tuesday night. I tend to agree with her, though her idea of preparing them usually involved a deep fryer and a tub of lard. For baby-led weaning, we've to be a little more strategic because round foods are basically perfectly shaped little throat plugs. That choking hazard fear is exactly why we smash them flat.

You have to start them in cold water in your pot. If you drop potatoes into already-boiling water, the outsides turn to complete mush while the insides stay as hard as rocks, which I learned the hard way while trying to rush through making dinner while packing up orders for my Etsy shop. You let them boil until you can stab them easily with a fork, and then you've to let them sit in the strainer and steam dry for a few minutes so they aren't a soggy, watery mess on the baking sheet.

Because standing over a hot stove while a baby clings to your leg screaming is actual torture, I usually lay my youngest down under the Wooden Baby Gym in the living room while I deal with the boiling water. It's a lifesaver because it distracts him with those little wooden rings and the fabric elephant just long enough for me to drain the pot, and I actually don't hate looking at it because it isn't made of that obnoxious, headache-inducing bright plastic that makes my house look like a commercial daycare center.

If you're trying to survive the wonderfully messy reality of baby-led weaning and need gear that honestly holds up to the chaos, you might want to browse Kianao's collection of sustainable baby products—they really wash well when the potato inevitably hits the fabric.

The smash and the aftermath

This is the part where you can honestly let your older kids help, assuming you've the patience for it on any given day. After the potatoes are boiled and slightly cooled, I let my four-year-old take the bottom of a heavy plastic cup and squish them flat on the parchment paper. He feels like a superhero, and it saves me a step. You just want them flattened out so they aren't round choking hazards anymore, and they become these perfectly grabbable little discs for tiny hands.

I bake them at like 400 degrees for maybe twenty minutes, just enough to warm them through with a tiny bit of olive oil, but not enough to make them sharp.

Let's talk about the mess, though, because smashed baby potatoes are basically a sensory bin disguised as dinner. The starch, the oil, the little bits of potato that get cemented into the creases of your baby's neck—it's a whole situation. My oldest used to ruin his cheap, synthetic store-bought onesies every time we had potatoes because the grease stains would never come out, and the fabric would stretch into this weird, permanent trapezoid shape after I scrubbed it.

Now, I swear by the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit for my youngest. I'm not exaggerating when I say he took a literal fistful of buttery mashed potato last week, rubbed it directly into his chest like war paint, and after I tossed it in the wash with a standard stain remover, it seriously looked brand new. The fabric is thick enough to survive my aggressive scrubbing but soft enough that it doesn't give him those weird red friction rashes under his arms. For church days or when we really leave the property, my daughter wears the Flutter Sleeve Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit, which somehow also miraculously survives the potato onslaught while looking incredibly cute. They're genuinely worth spending a few extra dollars on so you aren't replacing clothes every three weeks.

When teething ruins your dinner plans

I also need to mention that there will be days when you spend thirty minutes perfectly boiling, resting, and smashing these little potatoes, and your baby will take one look at them and start screaming. Teething is the thief of joy.

When their gums are swollen, they don't want anything warm or textured anywhere near their mouths. On those nights, I just accept defeat, eat the baby's portion myself standing over the sink, and hand him the Panda Teether. Look, it's just okay. It's fine. It does the job. It’s a piece of silicone shaped like a bear that he violently gnaws on while glaring at me from his highchair. It has these little textured bumps that he seems to like, and it's definitely better than him chewing on his own fingers until he cries, even if it doesn't miraculously solve all my parenting problems.

Instead of panicking about how many ounces of solid food your kid is genuinely swallowing and obsessing over getting that restaurant-level crispiness you see on Pinterest, just bake the potatoes until they're soft enough to pass the squish test and focus on keeping everyone alive until bedtime.

Before you go boil a massive pot of water and cover your kitchen in potato starch, make sure you're stocked up on the essentials that honestly make this parenting gig slightly easier. Check out our full collection of organic, baby-led weaning friendly gear at Kianao to save your sanity and your laundry routine.

The messy questions nobody else will answer for you

Do I seriously have to peel every single one of these tiny potatoes?
Lord, no. I don't have the time or the fingernails to peel thirty microscopic potatoes. If your baby is right around six months and just starting out, you can just pinch the flesh out of the skin after they're baked and hand them the soft middle part. By the time my kids were nine or ten months old, they just gnawed on the whole smashed thing, skins and all. If they gag a little, they're just figuring out their mouth map.

Can I use sweet potatoes instead of regular ones?
You can, but they're a totally different beast. Sweet potatoes have way more water in them, so when you try to smash them, they basically just turn into a puddle of orange mush on your baking sheet. If you want to do sweet potatoes, just roast them in sticks. Save the smashing for the waxy little yellow or red ones.

What do I do when my kid inevitably throws them directly onto the floor?
You take a deep breath, pick them up, and throw them away while questioning all your life choices. Honestly, babies throw food because they're practicing cause and effect, not because they hate your cooking. I usually only put one or two pieces on their tray at a time so the floor casualties are minimal. If the dog gets it, consider it a blessing that you don't have to sweep.

How do I store the leftovers so they don't taste like sad cardboard the next day?
Store them in a glass container in the fridge, but don't microwave them when you reheat them unless you want them to turn to rubber. I throw the leftovers back in the oven or the air fryer for a few minutes just to warm them up. But realistically, I usually just eat the leftovers cold out of the fridge at 10 PM while scrolling on my phone in the dark.