updated 2 days ago by gwyneth | 107 views | 4 barks

Rescue ragout and other high-calorie recipes

I turned this over to the cook while I go toss a pig ear).

When Junior arrived 11 years ago, he weighed just 26 pounds. (He'd almost certainly been on the streets for a while before being picked up.) He was so thin that he'd splay out like he was doing the splits. Thankfully, his human dad waited a couple of years to tell me that he'd really thought Junior wasn't going to make it.

With constant input from the samoyed mailing list, I devised a weight gain regimen that involved lots of protein, fat, and calcium (to restore bone strength). So his digestive system would not be overwhelmed by the influx of calories, Junior got a number of smaller meals a day.

For breakfast, he got kibbles 'n squeak or dog crustini. In mid-morning, a couple of spoonfuls of cottage cheese. Lunch was half a can of oil-packed sardines (an excellent source of protein and calcium), not drained--smashed a little with a fork to incorporate the oil. In mid-afternoon, a cooked carrot from the rescue ragout, smushed with a little bacon- or ragout fat. Suppertime: rescue ragout.

Kibbles 'n squeak

Cook two or three pieces of bacon (the easy way: bake at 350F on a cake rack, on a cookie sheet, until crisp.) Spoon melted fat over kibbles, crumble one of the pieces of bacon in, and stir. Make sure it's not too hot before serving. (Name comes from English dish of cabbage, potatoes and bacon fat.)

Dog crustini

Stir one or two tablespoons of olive oil into kibbles with a sprinkle of garlic powder (not salt). (Crustini is what bread with olive oil and garlic is called in some parts of Italy).

Rescue ragout

Although you can use bone-in chuck roast, I found it was much better to ask the butcher at the grocery store for "weird pieces" of beef. When I explained I'd be happy to pay for pot roast cuts with more bones and fat than humans might otherwise like, I'd usually get some very good deals. (You can use any combination of beef and beef bones--so if the butcher's not there, keep an open mind as you look through the meat selection. Or your freezer.)

Place meat into a large pot. Add at least two cans of beer and 1/4 to 1/2 cup of vinegar, then water to cover the meat. It's important to understand the reasoning. Beer adds calories (the darker and heavier the beer, the more calories, but even cheap beer is fine) and has a long tradition in human beef recipes, such as Flemish beef stews. Vinegar reacts with the bones to dissolve much more calcium into the broth, and will eventually neutralize with cooking.

Cook for at least two hours over low heat, then add carrots and, optionally (depending on how much weight dog needs to gain), a small amount of potatoes/sweet potatoes or a few spoonfuls of uncooked rice or barley. Cook for another hour or more. Carrots provide fiber and vitamin A, and are rich in other nutrients not destroyed by heat (in fact, cooking carrots makes the vitamin A more accesible). The potatoes/sweet potatoes/rice/barley actually make the ragout lower in calories, per serving, so are probably more desirable for an underweight big dog who will be having many servings of ragout per day.

If the broth smells too "vinegary" at that point, add water and boil for 15 to 30 minutes. This recipe is very flexible, and "overcooking" by human recipe standards is good. If the meat is still clinging to the bones, the ragout needs more cooking.

By now the rescued dog, and any others nearby, should be staring at you with love in their eyes and drool in their mouth(s). To serve some right away, ladle out a serving  and let it cool enough to avoid burning. Cool the rest, and remove bones (ideally, the marrow will have fallen into the ragout, but if it hasn't, scoop it out and add).

Before you dispense each portion, stir the pot so you can include meat, fat, carrots and broth. Remember, the purpose is leftovers, so you can freeze some or all of it.

With 'finicky' or hesitant eaters, it's a good idea to reheat chilled ragout slightly so it smells more (that's thoughtful for all dogs, according to the theory that their advanced smelling ability does far more work than what we know as 'tasting'.) I just plopped some into a (non-metal) bowl, and miked for 20-30 seconds, until lukewarm.

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After about six weeks of this routine, I knew Junior had gained enough weight when he started licking the bacon fat off his morning kibbles, then spitting them on the floor like watermelon seeds. Now up to 45 pounds, Junior switched to the "ever-full" bowl of dry Euke that would keep him at that weight for the next decade.

Other small weight-gain meals

Just a few ideas:an egg, scrambled in bacon fat (smells much more vivid to dog); half a sweet potato, microwaved and buttered (but let cool, and stir butter in); slices of liverwurst; and peanut butter whirls (peanut butter spread on 100% whole wheat bread, rolled up, and sliced).

Note about the rescue ragout. When I first posted the rescue ragout recipe to the samoyed mailing list all those years ago, several members wrote that it sounded so good they were going to cook it for their human families. To serve to humans, add some chopped onion at the beginning (not good for dogs, but makes the human version better); minimize the vinegar (though its calcium-precipitating effect is good for middle-aged and older human women); and skim some of the fat off (easier after chilling). Humans may also prefer it cooked less, particularly the carrots and potatoes, which can be added about an hour before the end of cooking. (They're cooked longer in the dog version, so they absorb more of the broth and disintegrate into a meaty mush.)

Further notes, responding to Liberty's bark: lamb meat is great in the rescue ragout but lamb bones can smell horrible when cooking. My mom suggests either using beef bones (without meat), veal bones, chicken bones (of course, removed before serving) or no bones. If she's buying lamb, the place that sells it to her can probably give her a couple of beef bones without much or any meat on it--the kind that have a lot of marrow are really good.

The green beans and juice are a great idea! Also, it takes only a little bit of bacon fat to "smell up" most foods if the dog is both fat-restricted and reluctant to eat.

Other blog posts with recipes:

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Recipes: low cal summer snacks