Home Made "Animal Digest" or Ever Tried Demi-glace?

[aprilprey]

I gave up feeding raw to my 12 year old Boo - she was very fickle about the whole thing.  I think its because she can't smell very well - the canned foods she likes best stink to high heaven - much stronger than Forti Flora. When I read about how older cats lose their sense of smell as they age, and need to be encouraged to eat at times.....it describes Boo to a "T" - although I think her problem stems from UTI problems her first year of life.  She will not react to the types of things that make a cat squint with that "Who Farted?" look when they smell something they don't like - such as an orange peel.  I have never been able to get her to react to a smell the way a normal cat does - even when she was young.

Yesterday, I made some cooked cat food using chicken thighs + Call of the Wild.  I had tested the COTW on her duck canned food to ensure it was not offensive to her, and she ate it.  OK then...lets try cooked as a last ditch effort to get her eating something I have made.  The response?  "Meh - what IS THIS???  Is it food?  Why it is taking up space in my dish?".  And, yes, I did add Forti Flora.  Still - "meh".

So I examined the ingredients list again...(Nutro Natural Choice - Duck).  Hmmm...what is this "natural flavors" ingredient?  It is the "special sauce" that makes this brand so good? Is it animal digest? 

The next question is: what can I make at home that would provide that intense, "flavor punch" that clearly makes this food attractive?  I am basically trying to reverse-engineer this food.

The only thing that comes to mind is: Demi-glace, which is a very concentrated broth.  Basically, you make a broth and spend the next 15 hours cooking it down, evaporating the water...to end up with a very richly flavored sauce.  I wonder if I made a demi-glace from pork broth (another ingredient in Nutro) if that would appeal to her?

Tossing it out there to see if anyone else had tried it.  And would there be any reason to be concerned about a concentrated broth, providing it was devoid of salt and spices - just meat extract?

This is the last ditch effort to get Boo eating something we make, instead of a factory.  She seems determined to eat highly processed, industrial food!  We make so much of our OWN food, its just an extension of what we do for ourselves.

 

[ldg]

Honestly, I think it's worth a try. :nod: And I can't think of any reason not to use it if you're using just meat to make it. I wouldn't use bone-in meat, because you'd wind up with no idea how many minerals are in there. I don't know how that works - if without the collagen or marrow or whatever if you get the same kind of broth though. :dk:

How's her weight? Have you tried a touch of bacon grease? Someone was asking about that before, and I found the idea on Dr. P's website actually, she was experimenting with adding bacon fat to the ground food for different flavoring...

 

[aprilprey]

I was the one asking about bacon grease.   Her weight has stabilized - yay; she's a solid 7.75 lbs with healthy appetite.  Once she got that Depo-Medrol out of her system, her appetite normalized and her weight loss stopped. 

I did get some sardines tonight - in olive oil.  She does like that sardine flavor, so I'm trying some sardines in with the chicken tomorrow morning.  It just kills me that she insists on such expensive food knowing we are on a slow path to welfare/bankruptcy here - and I can make something healthier at a fraction of the cost!  I could also try a darker poultry, like turkey thighs/drumsticks - closer to darker duck meat maybe?  I mean, a food processor can make a nice smooth pate too!

But I also question making broth w/out bone.  I'll have to do some investigating.  We use a pressure cooker, but we don't cook the bones any longer than necessary, and they are still firm and hard when it all done...not the same as the hours long slow cook that turns them to mush. I notice that many cat foods have pork broth added - there's gotta be something to that!

ETA: a little Googling and I found that....

 - The longer you cook the broth the higher the calcium, esp. if some acid is added (vinegar)

- Browning the meat prior will fuse amino acids with sugars to create the Maillard reaction, increasing the flavor

- One source said to cook the bones ALL day or even overnight for beef for the best mineral content - so I think standard broth may be ok and low enough in calcium - the bigger the bones the longer it takes to extract minerals

http://www.westonaprice.org/food-fe...2OiJicm90aHMiO2k6NTtzOjEwOiJib25lIGJyb3RoIjt9

(The above article written by Sally Fallon - who is apparently the "Dr. Pierson/Dr. Becker" of bone broths).

- The source below mentions adding vinegar and cooking 24 hours for chicken and 72 for beef for the highest calcium content:

http://paleohacks.com/questions/108...ent-analysis-of-bone-broth.html#axzz2hwdiF6u6

This recipe makes broth with turkey giblets...not so much bone: http://www.finecooking.com/videos/how-to-make-turkey-giblet-broth.aspx

My quick and dirty assessment?  If you leave out the acid, have lots of meat vs large bones (beef or pork), and don't cook it any longer than necessary - I would think the mineral content would be minimal enough not to throw the food out of balance.

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

I think @pinkman made something that was very tasty to his furkids that cooked and cooked and ended up being a gel type thing.  Can't quite remember what he used, whether it was marrow, or chicken feet, or just what.  Hopefully he will come on here and say, since I used that new method of identifying members

 

[cat dad]

Have you tried soaking a can of tuna in a couple of cups of water and using that "broth" as a flavor enhancer?

 

[pinkman]

Pinkman here.

What I used to make the "gelatin" was chicken feet and turkey necks. Both items I bought for stock making (for myself). You can use any bones really, from beef oxtail to chicken wings. I used feet just because they were uber cheap. Basically I blanched the necks and feet in boiling water for a good 5-10 minutes or so, then cleaned the bones. This isn't really necessary, it's just a habit of mine. Afterwards, you'll want place the bones and necks back into the pot, and simmer for at least five hours. You'll want to scoop any sort of foam that comes up pretty often. The stock will go from clear, golden (if using feet), to opaque white. Feel free to take a fork and scrape off the skin and meat off the necks, if you like. I sometimes do, sometimes don't.

Once cooled, you can pour it into ice cube trays and make stock-blocks as my partner calls them. What you'll get is GELATIN. Solid gelatin. I use these gelatin cubes to make flavored rice, soups, and also as a small treat for my cats. I have yet to try them with my newcomer but our OG cat Lox enjoys a thin slice of gelatin during the summer. She gets gelatin RARELY though, because like LDG says - you can't really know for sure how much minerals are being leeched out into the stock. 

Other toppers I make are just ground freeze-dried raw and treats, puree'd baked chicken, chicken skin chips, and salmon skin chips. 

 

[aprilprey]

Thank you Pinkman!  Ahhhh...your handle makes me think of "Breaking Bad" and Jesse Pinkman...oh how I miss that show.

Helpful input.  Don't know if you read my longer post upthread.  According to the "bone broth people" (I guess bone broth is a big Paleo Diet thing to replace calcium you'd normally get from dairy) you need to add an acid such as vinegar to the broth, then simmer for 24 hrs for chicken, up to 72 for beef to extract enough minerals for human health benefits.  Makes me wonder if run of the mill broth, with no acid, would be much lower.  I was also thinking of using ox tails, which have little bone in them.

I too have tried making cooked chicken pate.  Sigh - not a hit at all.  I was stocking up on Boo's favorite canned food the other day...lamenting the fact she won't eat the stuff I cook to the cashier.  "I guess she just doesn't like Mom's cooking" was her response.  Too funny.

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

 
I too have tried making cooked chicken pate.  Sigh - not a hit at all.  I was stocking up on Boo's favorite canned food the other day...lamenting the fact she won't eat the stuff I cook to the cashier.  "I guess she just doesn't like Mom's cooking" was her response.  Too funny.

I made homemade chicken pate, and my extremely picky eater loved it!  It's hard for me to find a canned food he will eat, but he went crazy for the homecooked chicken thighs. 

How did you make yours.  I used baked boneless thighs with a little water while baking (covered), and Alnutrin w/eggshell powder.  Forgot to add liver for my first batch, so basically it was just the cooked thighs and all their yummy juices, and the supplement, some added water in the blender and blended it all up once it was cool.  Kept adding water till the consistency I wanted.  Was a big hit

 

[aprilprey]

 
I made homemade chicken pate, and my extremely picky eater loved it!  It's hard for me to find a canned food he will eat, but he went crazy for the homecooked chicken thighs. 

How did you make yours.  I used baked boneless thighs with a little water while baking (covered), and Alnutrin w/eggshell powder.  Forgot to add liver for my first batch, so basically it was just the cooked thighs and all their yummy juices, and the supplement, some added water in the blender and blended it all up once it was cool.  Kept adding water till the consistency I wanted.  Was a big hit

I used chicken thigh with bone-in.  Baked in a small dish covered with foil.  Did not weigh out the meat until it was off the bone, and all the liquids were captured as well.  I then separated the solids from the liquid, and put most of the solids in a food processor.  Once that was smooth, I added back the juices - I did not add any extra water to mine...all liquids added came from the chicken.

It was nice and smooth...at least the texture could be duplicated.  I used Call of the Wild...mixed in the right amount then packed it up.

Only to have Boo say: "MEH".  Go figure.

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

May it was the Call of the Wild.  Two of mine don't like it.  That's why I used the Alnutrin w/eggshell powder. They all 3 are ok with it.  If you ask the Alnutrin folks, they'll send you free samples

 

[aprilprey]

 
May it was the Call of the Wild.  Two of mine don't like it.  That's why I used the Alnutrin w/eggshell powder. They all 3 are ok with it.  If you ask the Alnutrin folks, they'll send you free samples

Well - I tested that by putting a little COTW on the food she likes to see if it put her off - before I bothered. It didn't.  That's why I thought she'd eat it. She didn't.

Bottom line: she's fickle.  She's done this with the Dr. P raw...TCFeline....tries it once or twice..then meh!

I got a call from the vet we took her to yesterday: bloodwork looks great...clean bill of health.

Sigh.  She wants to stick to 2 flavors of Nutro...I guess that's how its gonna be. It's been since MAY of this year begging her to eat this or that.  Sigh.  There are TONS of other things I need to put my energies into.

You WIN MISS BOO!  Whatever "natural flavors" are in this canned food...I just can't duplicate it.

 

[raintyger]

I have heard that tripe really smells.

I've also used freeze-dried liver as a topper, it puts out a strong odor, too.