My basic recipe in which I use some variations off of for larger batches and to meet the nutritional needs of our various cats.
Ingredients
5 lb Chicken Thighs with bone and skin
1/2 lb Chicken heart
1/2 lb Chicken liver
4 egg yolks
4 cooked egg whites
1/2 lb Cooked Salmon
500 IU Vitamin E
100mg Vitamin B Complex
1000 mg Taurine
1 tsp light salt
Start out cooking the salmon, i just do it in a frying pan with some butter which I will later add my egg whites into. It's not a good idea to feed cats raw fish, so cooking the salmon is important.
Separate your egg yolks into a large mixing bowl. Save the egg whites to add into the frying pan with the salmon.
When adding the egg whites I scramble them a bit to mix with the butter and salmon juices. As some cats aren't real fond of the egg whites, it's a good way to add some flavor to them and make them more palatable.
Returning to the egg yolks I mix in my dry ingredients and vitamins. Again it's important to use a large mixing bowl as you will need to add in your ground organ meat. Whisk together your dry ingredients and egg yolks.
At this point, you are ready to start grinding your organ meat. Grinding the organ meat will go very quickly so I spend a lot more time making sure I am properly mixing my egg yolks and supplements. This is also when I run the cooked salmon and the egg whites through the grinder. It's very important to mix this part well as there are a few tastes that your cat(s) may not approve of.
After having created a slurry with the organ meat, salmon, eggs and supplements you can begin grinding the chickens thighs. For grinding the thighs I use a larger stock pot and add in some of the organ slurry as I go. I don't want to just try to mix it in at the end as it becomes a bigger chore to have it well dispersed. Discard any pieces of bone or cartilage left in the grinder.
There's a number of different ways to store your raw food, although what works best for us is quart size freezer bags. They store flat, we can get most of the air out and make good use of the labels as we have some modified recipes for each of our three cats. We simply fold the bag over a pint size plastic cup, scoop the raw food in and squeeze out as much air as possible. We used to weigh them, but there wasn't much variation and our cats go through the bags relatively quickly once thawed.
For chicken hearts and to add variety to our cats diets, we use haretoday.com. We buy whole ground duck and rabbit and it's great place to get ground chicken including organ meat if you aren't ready to jump in with both feet. The 1 lb bags of ground meat is also what we hold in reserve should we temporarily run out of their raw food.
Variations can be made to the recipe to make things a little simpler or if you don't have access to chicken hearts. Taurine can be added in place of chicken hearts and fish oil can be used instead of the cooked salmon. Many times it's just figuring out what your cat will eat and over time most people will make some modifications.
Before you start, it's a good idea to see what your cat will actually eat. An egg yolk mixed with a lb of their canned food or a small offering of salmon or cooked egg whites. Not all cats will take well to them and some modifications may be necessary. Over time you can get it dialed in and have a happier healthier cat as a result.
