iPet’s Ally Weekly Q&A Round-up 5-18-20: Is it true that broccoli absorbs most of the nutrients?

                 Hello, I’m Dr. Ruth Roberts i’m so, delighted that you have chosen to start making the original crock pet diet for many of you that have been doing this for years this will be somewhat of a refresher but what I wanted to do is kind of clean up some of the changes that we’ve made over the years so that you can all start from the same place so, first of all what do you make the crock pet diet in as you can see I’ve got before me an array of different options. Obviously we started out with a crock pot which is great when I was working that was the best way to get this done in an efficient manner I could make a batch put it in the crock pot before I left for work or before I went to bed and then when I got home or the next morning it was ready to go ready to be processed so that’s always an option this is a small one the normal sized ones are something like this they’ll hold a full batch this would hold something like a third of a batch the next option is just a stock pot on the stove so this will hold about a batch but you’ll honestly have to cram the leafy greens in at the last minute and then the other option is a roasting pan so it can be one of these deals that you’ve probably got lying around for the house you can also give a tabletop roaster oven which is about this long and that big that will actually hold three batches of the original crock pet diet so if you’ve got a number of pets that you’re cooking for or a big dog it becomes a whole lot easier to do the other option when I had when Mary Jo and I had 10 pets we were making a lot of as you can imagine and so we had hotel pans so the things that you see in buffet lines they’re usually that once we got were about six inches deep and roughly this big again they hold three batches of food in a whack and so when we had the ten pets we made four of those a month and just cooked them and you know kind of cranked it out and then froze everything in containers so whatever works for you a lot of you have insta pots a lot of folks in our crock-pot Cook’s community love their insta pots some of them are getting batches done as quickly as in 20 minutes pressure cookers are fine so the original idea behind slow cooking is to put heat in gently and to cook the food slowly so that we don’t add a ton of heat and that’s a tremendous principle in traditional Chinese veterinary medicine but you know Kali if it prevents you from actually getting the job done choose what is gonna make life easy estroux so all of that take all of that into consideration when you’re choosing how to cook now the next thing.

  I would like to talk about is what do you do with it afterwards so what do you store it in granted this is precooked we bought a bunch of chicken on sale and packaged it up but these silicone storage bags have been fantastic while we’re traveling and the thing I like about them is that they are dishwasher safe they’re not going to degrade with use like the plastic containers would. And again you’re not contributing plastic to the environment so check this out on Amazon we’ll put some links below for the silicone bags they them now with zipper seals so it’s a little bit easier and then I’ll put some links to the tabletop roaster oven and then the hotel pants I mentioned as well the other thing. I think that’s important before you start cooking is to get everything you need in one place so these are the ingredients we’re going to add right as as the batch is  cooking so we’ve got some iodized salt calcium citrate turmeric and ground mustard and then we’ve got some garlic and live veggies and everything ready to go there I’ve got my measuring cup my teaspoons and then the things that we’re going to add afterwards is the oil. So we’re using good healthy oils to replace the high fat proteins ideally because these are more predominant with a mega 3 fatty acids which are the anti-inflammatory fatty acids so we want to add this after the food has been cooked and once it’s cooled a little bit so we don’t destroy those good healthy properties of the oils and then the other thing is the holistic total body support which is health which is the multivitamin that is composed with glandular items so that we can really support your pets endocrine system and keep everything working well we don’t want to add that to cooked food or super hot food because then we’re gonna denature the vitamins particularly the B vitamins and also start to change how the glandulars are available to your pet, so we want them in that form so ideally when you’re going to feed your pet just scoop out the food add a little bit of warm water to take the chill off of it for cats often one of the few times I’ll ever recommend a microwave stick the food in a bowl in the microwave so for somewhere around five to 10 seconds mix it up and then add the holistic total body support so cats are really texture sensitive. so if you add water sometimes they’re like no I’m not eating that so that’s kind of the preliminary stuff we’ve got everything ready to go the other thing I want to do is kind of give you an idea of time scale hence the little clock so I’m gonna stop right now we’re going to use this roaster pan to make our batch today I’ve actually kind of got a batch and a half worth of chicken so I’m gonna make another batch sort of in this pot as well just so we can go ahead and make a bunch and freeze it all up so let’s get started are you ready?

Okay here we are for step two the other thing I forgot to mention is, see how we’ve got all this broccoli and I think a zucchini or something in there this is one of the tricks we used to use when we were cooking for everybody. if we’ve got vegetables that are starting to go south we just had this bag in the freezer and we’d fill it up and then add sort of the leftovers to the next pot so are you ready to get started the clock says it is eleven thirty seven, so we’re gonna get started now and we’ll do some little magic of time-lapse photography so here we go washing and move over to escaping with the broccoli and the steady part. I think it’s always a good idea, to cut the stalk into smaller pieces so we’ll actually we’ve got 1 inch long pieces and as you can see my two thoracic of species veggies the broccoli which I’m cutting up tightly and then this monster is the bok choy and then I’ve got some zucchinis we’re going to need roughly 6 carrots, I’m gonna cut the ends off and the other thing I want you to remember a lot of folks get really hung up on doing everything precisely and exactly. It’s a recipe so there’s going to be variations on it the only place where recipes have to be really exact is if you’re baking so that’s truly more like a chemistry project now in the old video I took a whole letter nut squash them through in which kind of freaks some of you out so and as we’ve been traveling and having to use different cooking pots and things of that nature. I’ve really kind of had to change that up so things will cook more efficiently same thing with big chunks of meat will typically cut them into smaller pieces I think the weirdest way we’ve ever made the crock pet diet is actually on a wood stove and it worked out amazingly well because these seeds even though they’re tasty sometimes just do not pass through our pest GI tract very well and so it’s kind of disconcerting to see stuff come out whole line they’re just gonna work on that a little fleshy strings will cookdown all right and then we’re gonna cut this up a little bit more just to can make it cook well use a big knife that helps and a sharp one right most chefs I’ll tell you that most knife accidents happen, because the knife is dull and you know what knife accidents means.

Okay so now we’re gonna move over to loading the pots up and again we’ve got two batches here so let’s see how we’re doing we’re ten minutes in currently, Oh seven minutes. Okay good even better so we’ve got these two batches and as a sudden we’ve got to wax it chicken here so each of these chicken thighs is about three and a half pounds we do not use beans for Pepe and Mona so we’re going to use two actually three and a half pounds in here so let’s take a break a minute I’m going to re angle the camera so that we can look at things a little bit better. 

Okay now we’re going to load the pans up first thing I forgot where I put this in the oven so I’m going to set the oven to 275 so again these chicken thighs are roughly half a pound a piece I’d like to put the proteins on the bottom we’re going to put three and a half rounds for the full batch so that will be seven of these lovely things and actually maybe we just have the let’s see four. I’m gonna put the juice in there this is going forgot to put this thing so the one downside with these things I guess earthen cut this part out – does this is super boring thank you okay, so finish living this up so we’ve got one two three four five six seven okay so this is the thing here’s the eighth thing a little chicken thigh it’s not worth doing a whole extra batch so we’re just going to kind of combine it together and this is what I mean by don’t be afraid to go off recipe okay so we’ve got a mishmash of carrots one two three four and a smidge so that works out okay so again the next step is you want to put your hard veggies on next.

Now this is where you guys freak out a little bit the butternut squash so you know as you can see it’s not real easy to measure butternut squash right so we’re gonna have to estimate, so I’m gonna say that’s about a cup so here’s one cup it’s fall so Pepin Moana are excited and we’ll say that’s to cost now we need four cups total of veggies and actually smidge more because we’ve got that extra breast in right. so we’re gonna say there’s one there’s two and that one was a little short so we’ll put some extra in and now we’re gonna go for the Brassica species so the broccoli, so here’s a cup roughly when I get the good green stuff in and here’s the other cup got a little buck choo in there. That’s okay there’s a little bit of extra goodies and if you’re using leafy greens  again one cup so this is what I mean by hand grab that’s about a cup see how that all kind of fits in there so that’s how I generally end up measuring if you’re using leafy greens you actually need to use two cups of leafy greens to make up for all of what’s going to cook down during that process so that really is almost all the leafy part of this Chuck joy here so we’re gonna get a three cups total of the brassicas right so we have two cups of the broccoli in one cup of the bok choy and so we’re in good shape there for an extra little handful in of the good stuff because again we’ve got that extra bit of meat so we’re throwing that in there and that’s it so we’ve got some leftovers and what I would do with those is just freeze them again.

Now the thing we’ve got to do here as well so one of the things is putting a whole garlic clove in if you don’t know the cooking trick of taking your clove and putting your knife on top and smashing it probably not scaring your cats with it or convincing your cats that it’s a new toy that pops all the paper off that goes in there and let’s see there’s a teaspoon. Here’s our turmeric so we’re going to put a smidge heaping teaspoon because it’s one teaspoon in the batch so there’s a little bit extra in there that’s going in here’s our mustard same deal a little extra and I die salt which will pour into. Here so we don’t turn the salt yellow now the recipe calls for iodized salt because as needed it’s not sufficient in the food that’s here so it’s important to use either iodized salt or you can use kelp or something of that nature at about a quarter teaspoon. Yeah, the last thing we’re gonna do is add some water let’s see where’s my little cup here it is that’s kind of a hot mess – and happen the moment I actually like it a little wetter so we’re gonna add three cups so this is something you’re gonna have to figure out for your pet. What consistency do the like do they like so one of our chefs Michael his pup loves soupy stuff so he adds a ton of water, it’s okay you just got to compensate so this would make should make somewhere around 12 cups of food total and you just gotta compensate so they eat right and then the last step is the calcium citrate it’s important to add it to the food while you’re cooking because it’s gonna do a couple of things one is it’s going to help remove the phytates and other anti nutrients that may be present in beans. And again the goal with the calcium is to balance the calcium phosphorus ratio so we’ve got about four pounds of protein in there. This product and you do need to look at the label if you’re using calcium citrate that you’ve gotten from us it’s 600 milligrams per teaspoon and a half so for a plain batch that’s about two tablespoons so here’s one here’s two – and then we’ve got another pan of protein in there so that’s 666 milligrams so that’s roughly a teaspoon and a smidge and for those of you that hate the smidge part of recipes. I would use somewhere around an eighth of a teaspoon to kind of make up that difference and we don’t actually have an eighth so we’re gonna use this quarter and use about half of that so there we go there’s our smidge technically translates to we are good to go and am I gonna mix this up now at the moment, I let this cook a little bit and go from there so we’re gonna pop this into the oven you don’t want to tell them it’s not okay really you’re not using oh so you’ve been using a whole lot more veggies and you should have. okay oh, it is on, okay good. so Arvin you can cut all of that diatribe out if you can get the part of putting it in the oven that’s great if not, that’s okay, all right, so we’ve got the first batch in the oven it is  now, so even with all the moving around and getting things prepped and turning you know all of that good stuff it took me that’s so that’s a little little bit more than about 20 minutes. I would say we’ve actually got about maybe 15 minutes of actual work time in there and that’s pretty slow I was going slow. So that y’all could see it obviously I’m not going to if I’m actually making a batch for Mona and pepper we’re not going to be moving stuff up and down the camera but needed to do that so you all could see what’s going on so right now we’re gonna let this cook and 275 is where I recommend you start having said that we often actually crank it up to about 325 so that we make that cooking time really kind of speed up again yes it would be lovely to do this all slow-cooked and perfectly according to TCB em but the reality is is what do you need to do to get it done get it in you know get it into your pets Bowl so do what makes sense for you what’s gonna make it easiest for you to do this consistently so we’re gonna let this cook and then once it’s finished we’ll cut come back in and refill how we end up processing it and go from there, Thanks!

And here we are at quarter of four and as you can see I had increased the oven to 325 but our batch of food is now all ready and it’s going to  cool and then we’ll do the last of it so there’s our batch so far looking pretty decent alright we’re back for the last part of making the original crockpet diet it is now just a little bit before 5 o’clock so we let it cool for about an hour and if you’ll remember we use chicken thighs so that means we need to get the bones out because the immersion blender doesn’t like them very much so we had 8 chicken thighs in there so we got to fish out 8 bones there’s one on the plate already 2 3 yeah this may be a little gross but if you’ve got some cartilage on there just throw that in there into the pot the immersion blender will take care of it and the reason. I say that is that when you buy glucosamine and chondroitin this is still a wee bit more niche essentially that is all made from chicken cartilage so you can get some free stuff from the chicken you’re using extra back six EPS gonna help it’s just gonna work and we may have to get the pepe restraining device out one more chocolate so for those of you that are not familiar with that technique that is a squirt bottle cap is an unusual cat people eat anything that is not nailed down so this is a little bit more of still what I’m gonna do first is actually grind it up and then we’re gonna put the oil in and he’s not going to do that is that it will take care of the heat that’s present in the food so it doesn’t over sort of   denature the oils if you will and I’ve got everything else I’m going to need here I’ve got my little scoop my measuring spoons and our little bags to store the finished product – and our handy dandy Bravo I think that’s what this is immersion blender which this thing has been amazing it is hello two years old now three years old and it has done well and survived so here we go the noise again I have to take this down to a pate consistency because mono will choke on the food if we don’t because she eats like all right so we’ve got everything all mixed up a little bit of heat coming out still not too shabby so I keep mentioning to everybody we want to rotate everything you want to rotate your proteins your veggies your carbohydrates should you use them and I don’t because caps of kitty he shouldn’t be eating carbohydrates and Moana gains weight too quickly if we give her a lot of starchy carbs like rice things like that so what we have here is grapeseed oil and a lovely brand-new bottle of it so we’re gonna add the six tablespoons of tres Cinco six so we’re good to go we’re gonna mix this back in get the extra off here and if you can’t hear Mona down there sniffing she’s fully convinced that something good will fall from the sky for her to supplement her dinner we had to feed them early because there was a good company of meowing and barking every time we went near the food so there is that the outside of that so here is the rather unappealing looking finished product and I’ll try my best not to spill it on the floor so get everything all mixed up in there a few small chunks again the most my favorite way to kind of store this and this has been easy as for trowel as these giant silicone bags they are heat-resistant all that good stuff people actually use these to do sous-vide needs which is a type of cooking method that uses low heat for a long period of time in a water bath and if you’ve not had a piece of protein if you are a meat-eater that’s been done via sous-vide you are truly missing out. It is remarkably tender you can also do other other things in them like a caramel some custards and things like that now the one trick we have learned over the years is to not overfill because even though they can expand easily with the freezing they tend to end up cracking these little bars that seal them off so we’re just going to divide this up into a couple of packages and again the other thing you want to remember is that not you don’t want to freeze too you want to have the quantities in these bags be about five days worth of food for your crew so for Pepin Moana that’s about a cup of day so that’s five cups total we should have about 12 cups of food here or something like that scoop out that’s lovely thing about these bags is they end up standing up on their own once they’ve got a little bit of food in there so the last part push it all down and and that’s guys pretty well cleaned out so that’s what’s left this is most pets your favorite part of making the cockpit diet they actually get to clean the pans because it’s fun so that’s pretty much It we’ll just slide the little bars on and take the extra air out oops wrong side that’s the other thing that takes a bit of getting used to but how to get these suckers slid on there

Yeah, last one, so we’re all sealed up it’ll take us take me about that’ll do maybe five minutes to clean up the rest of this stuff and you are set to go so there’s a batch or our pet diet that is complete and balanced for all life stages you’ve got the calcium in there the oil again you do need to add a multivitamin and I certainly hope it’s holistic total body support there’s a lot of different options out there but you do need to add that vitamin to make it complete so thanks so much I hope this is helpful for you as you start on your adventure in crock pet cooking and I’m Dr. Ruth Roberts I want you to remember that your pets best health starts in the bowl, take good care so like I said here’s Mona’s favorite part poor peppy Nia has been driven out because she’s such a little piranha.