First, this wasn't actually the first time I've made a cooked cat food. I know it tried it some time ago but for some reason I can't remember much about it. So technically this is my second experience making cooked cat food. I normally feed a ground raw diet to my cats but I wanted to try out a cooked food just for the heck of it.
I cooked the chicken in a pressure cooker. I cooked 5 1/2 lbs skin on, bone in chicken thighs for 20 mins. The internal temperature ended up at 200 F. I was shooting for 160 F which is the temperature needed to kill most pathogens. Next time I'll cook them for 15 mins.
Edit: I meant to mention that I added 1 cup of water to the pressure cooker before cooking.
The meat was easy to remove from the bone. It pulled off easily using my hands but it was even easier to scrape it off using a sharp knife. I removed 1/2 the skin as per Dr Ps recommendation. I should have removed that skin before cooking though. Doing it after cooking means a lot more fat got rendered into the cooking liquid than I intended. I ended up with 2 lbs 11 oz of meat and 4 cups of liquid.
I ran the meat and skin through my grinder and added back all of the liquid. The result was quite a nice texture. Not that the kitties care but I really didn't want the pasty looking stuff I've seen at sites showing cooked homemade cat food.
"> ">
And here it is with the liquid added:
It isn't as watery as it might look. The liquid just tends to separate.
Clean up only took a bit longer than if I had left the meat raw because of having to clean the pressure cooker.
All in all the cooking didn't add as much time or work as I thought it would. It certainly isn't as easy as just dropping the raw thighs into the grinder. On the plus side it was much more pleasant working with cooked chicken rather than raw!
As for the kitties, Jeta and Zara ate it fine. I knew they would. They aren't too finicky. Coco and Toby, as expected, required their favorite toppers to be added before they would even try it. Once they decided it might actually be food they gobbled it all up.
I'm a little disappointed though that I really can't come up with a nutritional analysis for it. All the USDA information that I depend on assumes liquid used for cooking is discarded. I expect my cooking liquid has quite a bit of nutritional value. I don't have any choice but to just use the nutritional information minus the liquid. And, of course, the database doesn't contain any entries for meat cooked in a pressure cooker. From my research pressure cooking is the cooking method that preserves the most nutrients.
Adding liver and using the Alnutrin calculator (knowwhatyoufeed.com) would be an easy way to finish it off. Of course premixes other than Alnutrin can be used also. For this experiment I just added the supplements I would use if it were raw.
I didn't add liver or gizzards or eggs. If I make another batch I might try just tossing those into the pressure cooker also.
All in all I'm quite happy with the result!
I cooked the chicken in a pressure cooker. I cooked 5 1/2 lbs skin on, bone in chicken thighs for 20 mins. The internal temperature ended up at 200 F. I was shooting for 160 F which is the temperature needed to kill most pathogens. Next time I'll cook them for 15 mins.
Edit: I meant to mention that I added 1 cup of water to the pressure cooker before cooking.
The meat was easy to remove from the bone. It pulled off easily using my hands but it was even easier to scrape it off using a sharp knife. I removed 1/2 the skin as per Dr Ps recommendation. I should have removed that skin before cooking though. Doing it after cooking means a lot more fat got rendered into the cooking liquid than I intended. I ended up with 2 lbs 11 oz of meat and 4 cups of liquid.
I ran the meat and skin through my grinder and added back all of the liquid. The result was quite a nice texture. Not that the kitties care but I really didn't want the pasty looking stuff I've seen at sites showing cooked homemade cat food.
"> ">
And here it is with the liquid added:
It isn't as watery as it might look. The liquid just tends to separate.
Clean up only took a bit longer than if I had left the meat raw because of having to clean the pressure cooker.
All in all the cooking didn't add as much time or work as I thought it would. It certainly isn't as easy as just dropping the raw thighs into the grinder. On the plus side it was much more pleasant working with cooked chicken rather than raw!
As for the kitties, Jeta and Zara ate it fine. I knew they would. They aren't too finicky. Coco and Toby, as expected, required their favorite toppers to be added before they would even try it. Once they decided it might actually be food they gobbled it all up.
I'm a little disappointed though that I really can't come up with a nutritional analysis for it. All the USDA information that I depend on assumes liquid used for cooking is discarded. I expect my cooking liquid has quite a bit of nutritional value. I don't have any choice but to just use the nutritional information minus the liquid. And, of course, the database doesn't contain any entries for meat cooked in a pressure cooker. From my research pressure cooking is the cooking method that preserves the most nutrients.
Adding liver and using the Alnutrin calculator (knowwhatyoufeed.com) would be an easy way to finish it off. Of course premixes other than Alnutrin can be used also. For this experiment I just added the supplements I would use if it were raw.
I didn't add liver or gizzards or eggs. If I make another batch I might try just tossing those into the pressure cooker also.
All in all I'm quite happy with the result!
Last edited: