Why Baby Bellas Are Just Portobellos in Denial (And Perfect for Bab...

I was standing in the vegetable aisle at Sainsbury’s, a twin balanced on each hip, desperately trying to distinguish between a punnet of white mushrooms, baby bellas, and portobellos. That's when I learned the great agricultural lie of our generation: they're all the exact same species. Agaricus bisporus. The white ones are babies, the baby bellas are moody teenagers with a slight tan, and the portobellos are the bloated adults. I felt profoundly betrayed by the marketing industry.

Also, to clear up a rather embarrassing conversation I had with my health visitor last month: when people talk about the nutritional benefits of a "baby bella," they mean the fungus. Not Baby Bel, the miniature cheese wrapped in that red wax that gets permanently embedded in your rug when a two-year-old steps on it. Once we sorted that out, the appointment went much smoother.

Introducing solids to twins is an exercise in managing expectations and wiping down walls, and mushrooms represent a unique challenge. They're slippery, they look mildly alarming when cooked, and they taste like nothing else on a typical weaning menu. But despite my initial reservations about feeding my daughters something that exclusively grows in the dark, they've become a staple in our chaotic household.

The confusing nutritional profile of a damp sponge

Our GP, a wonderful woman who looks like she hasn't slept a full night since 1998, mentioned we could start giving the girls mushrooms around six months when we kicked off solid food. I was deeply skeptical. If you look at a mushroom, it doesn't exactly scream "superfood." It looks like a prop from a low-budget fantasy film.

But when I looked into baby bella mushrooms nutrition (mostly by frantically scrolling on my phone while pinned under a sleeping toddler), the facts were surprisingly robust. Apparently, they're packed with Vitamin D. My grasp of photosynthesis versus fungal growth is incredibly shaky at best, but I’m told they're one of the only non-animal sources of Vitamin D in the produce aisle, assuming they were exposed to UV light at some point. Considering my twins treat direct sunlight like vampires do, I figured any extra Vitamin D couldn't hurt.

They also contain a bunch of B vitamins and fiber, which is supposed to help with the inevitable cement-nappies that accompany the transition to solid foods. I won't go into graphic detail here, but anything that helps a toddler's digestive system process a Tuesday afternoon pasta bake is a win in my book.

A very loud argument about washing dirt

This is where I need to take a controversial stand, and I don't care who I offend in the culinary world.

Every celebrity chef on television will tell you, usually in a very condescending whisper, that you must never, ever wash a mushroom. They insist you gently brush them with a specialised little pastry brush or a damp cloth, lest the porous fungi absorb water and ruin the delicate texture of your artisan risotto. They claim a washed mushroom will turn into a watery, rubbery mess in the pan.

I'm feeding two feral toddlers. Do you know what mushrooms grow in? Manure. Literal, actual compost. I'm not gently dusting manure off my child's dinner with a tiny broom. The amount of bacteria a crawling baby ingests in a single afternoon on a London pavement is staggering enough without me playing Russian roulette with unwashed fungi just to preserve the "integrity" of the sauté.

So I wash them. I dump the entire punnet in a colander and I blast them with the cold tap, offering them a brisk shower rather than a prolonged soak, and frankly, I sleep much better at night.

Anyway, you just lob them into a pan with some butter and cook them until they're squishy enough to easily pinch between your thumb and forefinger.

The great umami experiment

The first time I offered baby bellas to the girls, I was aiming for the whole Baby-Led Weaning aesthetic. I carefully sliced the cooked mushrooms into strips roughly the size of my pinky finger, as page 47 of my weaning book dictated. The idea is that a six-month-old can palm the strip and gnaw on the end of it like a savoury cigar.

In reality, cooked mushrooms are essentially lubricated slugs. Maya tried to pick hers up, squeezed it too hard, and it shot across the highchair tray and hit her sister squarely in the forehead. This resulted in tears from both parties.

When they finally did get them into their mouths, the reaction was purely comical. Mushrooms have that rich, earthy, umami flavour—a stark contrast to the bland sweetness of sweet potato or mashed banana they were used to. They both froze, chewed suspiciously, and looked at me as if I had just insulted their ancestry.

This is also why I’m incredibly particular about what they wear during meal times. Mushroom juice, mixed with whatever butter or oil you cooked them in, is a uniquely potent dye. I practically have shares in Kianao's Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit Sleeveless Infant Onesies purely for the envelope-style shoulders. When Maya inevitably drops a sauce-covered mushroom down her front, I don't have to pull the stained garment up over her head and smear mushroom sludge into her hair. You just pull it straight down over the body. It’s a genuine lifesaver. It’s definitely my favourite basic we own, mostly because it has enough elastane to stretch over their massive, 90th-percentile heads without a struggle, and it somehow survives the punishing 40°C washing cycles I put it through daily.

(If you're also fighting a losing battle against food stains, you might want to browse Kianao's organic baby clothes collection for things that actually survive the washing machine.)

Teething, chewing, and desperate distractions

There's a specific kind of hell that occurs when your baby is simultaneously learning to eat solid food and cutting their first teeth. They want to chew everything, but their gums are so inflamed that actual food makes them furious.

During one particularly brutal week of teething, I thought the rubbery texture of a well-cooked baby bella might soothe Isla's gums. It didn't. She just threw it on the floor and screamed at the dog.

We resorted to keeping the Kianao Panda Teether in the fridge. To be perfectly honest, it’s not a magic wand. It doesn’t magically cure the nocturnal screaming or the fact that my living room is covered in drool. But it's entirely decent. It's cute, the silicone gets nice and cold, and if you hand it to a crying baby while you frantically chop vegetables for dinner, it buys you exactly ten minutes of blessed silence before they get bored and launch it across the kitchen.

If you need to distract one twin while feeding the other, I highly suggest just dumping toys on the highchair tray. We use the Gentle Baby Building Block Set for this exact purpose. They're soft rubber, which is brilliant because when Maya inevitably gets frustrated with her mushroom puree and launches a block at her sister's head, nobody ends up needing a trip to A&E.

How we actually serve them now

As the girls approached nine months and developed their pincer grasp—that magical milestone where they suddenly want to pick up every microscopic speck of lint on your carpet—we moved from strips to diced mushrooms.

Dicing baby bellas into tiny, bite-sized pieces makes them infinitely easier for little fingers to manage, though you'll still find them wedged in the highchair crevices three days later.

Now that we're deep in the toddler "picky eating" phase, where anything green is treated as a personal threat, mushrooms have become my secret weapon. Because they've such a meaty texture, you can mince them up and absolutely bury them in spaghetti bolognese, quesadillas, or meatballs. The kids get the fiber and the B vitamins, and I get the smug satisfaction of knowing I've smuggled vegetables (fine, fungi) into their bodies without a tantrum.

Just remember to store them in a brown paper bag in the fridge. If you leave them in that plastic punnet they come in, they sweat, turn slimy, and smell like an old sock within 48 hours. I learned that the hard way, and the resulting smell took days to leave the kitchen.

If you're gearing up for the absolute carnage that's weaning, do yourself a favour and equip your kitchen properly. Check out Kianao's full range of baby feeding essentials before you try to serve a slippery fungus to a hostile infant.

Frequently Asked Questions That I Learned the Hard Way

Are baby bella mushrooms safe for babies?

Yeah, assuming you actually cook them. Raw mushrooms are ridiculously chewy and a massive choking hazard for babies, plus they're harder to digest. Just sauté or roast them until they're completely limp and squishy. If you can mash it easily between your fingers, it’s safe for the gummy little monsters.

What if my baby is allergic to mushrooms?

Mushrooms aren't in the top tier of common allergens (like peanuts or dairy), but it's always a bit of a gamble when you introduce a new food. We just gave them a tiny bit the first time and watched them like hawks for the rest of the afternoon. If you notice any hives, weird breathing, or extreme fussiness, obviously call a doctor immediately rather than reading my blog.

Can I freeze cooked baby bellas?

You can freeze them after they're cooked, yes. I tried freezing raw ones once because they were on sale, and when they thawed out they looked like deflated black balloons and turned into absolute mush in the pan. Cook them into a puree or a sauce first, then freeze that in ice cube trays for an easy backup dinner.

Why did my baby's nappy look so weird after eating them?

Because mushrooms are packed with fiber and babies have wildly inefficient digestive systems. Don't panic if you see little dark, undigested bits of mushroom in their nappy the next day. It’s completely normal, though deeply unpleasant to clean up. Page 47 of the parenting manuals never properly warns you about the visual horrors of weaning nappies.