Anyone tried to mimic Tiki Cat chicken (Puka Puka Luau) with home cooked?

So Tiki Cat Puka Puka is the absolute go to food in my house for the two little cats.  The good thing is each cat's daily requirement is only about 2/3 of a can because the cats are so small.  The bad thing is it's still about $3/can so it still adds up fast!  I'm getting some traction with mixing and may find that mixing also works with slightly less expensive canned foods thus stretching the expensive food a bit longer, but at the moment the mix includes a food with a similar cost.  Right now I'm ignoring the prices basically, but longer term I really would like to find a way to cut costs a bit.

So I was thinking about trying a home cooked diet.  While this wouldn't be raw (I don't think I want to deal with homemade raw) it at least would have advantage of knowing what it in the food and how it was made.  I know there are a couple of mixes I can buy that would make it easy to get a properly nutritious food.  What I'm wondering is how to get the shredded texture of the Tiki Cat, which I gather is important.  Although, I'm not really sure what it is that draws them to the Tiki.  Maybe it's not the fact that it's shredded, but it seems the most likely since I don't seem to get as much success with other types of cans, at least with the one cat.  The other distinct aspect of that food is that it's in a thin broth.  That should be easy enough to replicate I would guess.  But I'm not used to cooking much in the way of meat at home, just a couple of simple things.  Maybe this would be equally simple though.

Do you folks have any thoughts on how to go about cooking something similar to what comes in the blue can (as we call it around our house, LOL)?

Here's a link to a thread of home cooked cat foods including a chicken recipe in post #16:

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/263751/cooked-recipes-thread

Here's one with a picture of the cooked chicken food I made :

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/263374/my-first-cooked-chicken-cat-food

It's doubtful that what we make at home is going to be just like Tiki though. There are just so many differences between home-cooked and mass produced.

This is a great question, @2bcat! Our cats also like lots of Tiki foods -- particularly Gourmet Carnivore -- and I've wondered about making something similar, if only as a supplemental food.

I think it's the shreds and chunks in various Tiki foods that our cats love so much: the pickier cat enjoys carrying them around. I wonder about making some sort of "pulled chicken" food. Our cats loved Dr. Pierson's recipe the one time I made it, so I may try (some day!) making something similar that's chunkier and shreddier.

@mschauer, your thread about cooked foods give me lots of ideas, thank you.

mschauer said:

 
Here's a link to a thread of home cooked cat foods including a chicken recipe in post #16:

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/263751/cooked-recipes-thread

Here's one with a picture of the cooked chicken food I made :

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/263374/my-first-cooked-chicken-cat-food

It's doubtful that what we make at home is going to be just like Tiki though. There are just so many differences between home-cooked and mass produced.

Click to expand...

Thanks.  Yeah I'm sure we can't get exactly like the mass produced.  After all, the production of canned food (of any kind, far as I know) involves being cooked in the can (among other things).  So they are shredding raw chicken (by machine, presumably).  That's probably difficult to do with home tools.  Grinding is pretty straightforward but shredding like that?

It may not matter anyway; perhaps I should phrase the question more to the tune of if anyone has successfully switched Tiki Cat lovers to a home-cooked diet.

LisaHE said:

 
I think it's the shreds and chunks in various Tiki foods that our cats love so much: the pickier cat enjoys carrying them around. I wonder about making some sort of "pulled chicken" food. Our cats loved Dr. Pierson's recipe the one time I made it, so I may try (some day!) making something similar that's chunkier and shreddier.

Click to expand...

Pulled chicken is about right!  I guess I should think in terms of that.  Have no idea how to make that, although I suppose it couldn't be that hard to figure out.

Thanks for your thoughts!

You could probably shred and chop the chicken after it's cooked, and make a broth to pour over it.

When I make chicken soup, I "pull" the chicken. To do so, I cook the whole pieces of chicken in the soup broth. Once it's thoroughly cooked, I remove it and "pull" in opposite directions with two forks. Because it's soup for people, the shreds aren't as small. But with more pulling, it could be. Then if you add some of the cooking broth, you would have that texture.

AbbyNTim said:

 
When I make chicken soup, I "pull" the chicken. To do so, I cook the whole pieces of chicken in the soup broth. Once it's thoroughly cooked, I remove it and "pull" in opposite directions with two forks. Because it's soup for people, the shreds aren't as small. But with more pulling, it could be. Then if you add some of the cooking broth, you would have that texture.

Click to expand...

That sounds like a great technique, thanks for the tip! (I'm starting to think that maybe I should think about making cat food sooner rather than later, hmm...)

Did you end up making this? Pictures? Recipe?

I remembered this thread last night when I made food for our cats using EZcomplete supplement for the first time, with poached chicken. I poached the little "tender" strips of chicken breasts and then pulled the cooked pieces apart by hand to make shreds of varying thickness. I used poaching liquid as the fluid for the food, then added the EZcomplete powder. The cats were hesitant at first--this was their first EZcomplete food--but cleaned their dishes last night and this morning when I gave them little snacks. The smell is definitely different from Tiki but the cats really seemed to like it!