BACF, or cooked BARF — a step-by-step guide

Piotr Knapik

Founding Engineer @ meatpoint.io

There are several good reasons for preparing a ‘cooked raw diet’ for dogs and cats. We also get the impression that the topic is growing in popularity. Throughout my years of feeding a raw diet, I have prepared almost exclusively the cooked version of BARF, as my cat—who started out on commercial food—consistently refuses raw food. We invite you to read our guide, which I wish I’d come across myself a few years ago.

BACF — Biologically Appropriate Cooked Food — for dogs and cats 🐶🐱. Don’t be fooled – BACF is simply the cooked version of BARF (Biologically Appropriate Raw Food), which is admittedly a little more labour-intensive to prepare, but there are good reasons to prepare the most suitable meals for our furry friends in this way.

Why BACF?

👉 ☣️ For 100% certainty that our pets won’t be at risk of diseases such as avian flu (or, previously, pseudorabies — in some countries it has since been eliminated; Poland, for instance, has been officially recognised as free from Aujeszky's disease since June 2023, though not in wild boars!).

👉 🥩 For animals that simply won’t touch raw food, but we want to feed them BARF because it’s the healthiest option.

👉 🤕 For our companions who are too sensitive to raw food, e.g. those with pancreatic issues, convalescents, etc.

What else do you need compared to BARF?

✅ 🥘 A lidded pot for cooking and a hob.

✅ 🧐 A little more knowledge and practical cooking skills, which you’ll pick up in this article.

✅ ⏱ More time to prepare the mixture than with the raw version.

…and the rest is the same, even the calculator used to balance a raw diet — best and easiest with meatpoint.io 🦾

What should you not do?

❌ 🦴 Never cook bones or meat on the bone. Cooked bones are dangerous to eat (they are hard, brittle and sharp), and cooking meat on the bone leaches nutrients from the bone and disrupts the balance of key micronutrients.

❌ 💊 Never boil supplements or add them to a hot mixture. We cannot predict exactly what will happen to the nutrients in preparations treated in this way.

So how should you do it? Let’s break it down into three stages: the hot stage, the room-temperature stage and the fridge stage.

1️⃣ 🔥 The hot phase: high-calorie ingredients

🥦 At meatpoint.io, we choose cooked vegetables and weigh them after cooking for the recipe. We cook the vegetables for a long time, until they’re practically mushy. The process will speed up if, for example, we blend them before cooking. For convenience, we can prepare the vegetables well in advance of the rest of the mixture. We can also top up with water a few times, which will evaporate freely.

🥩 We select raw meat on meatpoint.io and weigh it raw for the recipe. With proper cooking, nutrient losses are generally considered negligible. We mince the meat to the consistency our furry friends prefer before cooking.

🦴 We never cook bones or meat on the bone.

🔪 Minced meat yields more than meat cooked in small or large pieces. If your pet prefers a smooth texture, you might consider cooking the meat in small pieces and mincing it after cooking, so that the resulting mixture is more compact (i.e. less watery).

💧 Cook or braise the meat in a small amount of water, as you’ll want to keep the cooking liquid. Ideally, use the amount of water specified in the recipe (bearing in mind that you may need a little to mix in the supplements). In practice, this looks more like a pile of meat with a bit of water added than meat submerged in water.

💡 Alternatively, you can cook the meat in batches in the same water (which requires more water), and use the water itself, once cooled, to mix in the supplements and then pour it over the meat in the containers. You can also steam it or cook it sous-vide – there are many options, but most instructions cover the most popular methods and tricks.

🥘 To prevent anything from sticking to the bottom of the pot, you can add pre-cooked vegetables (if available) and the fattier meat ingredients. You should also let the added water drain to the bottom.

⏱ Cook the meat on a low heat (to avoid burning), preferably covered and for as short a time as possible (approx. 10 mins). It’s worth giving it a stir now and then, as we want all the meat to be partially cooked.

2️⃣ 🌡 The room-temperature phase: supplementation

🥣 We wait to mix in the supplements until the entire cooked mixture has cooled to a lukewarm temperature — it can be slightly warm, but not very warm or hot. Specifically, it should be a maximum of 40°C, as higher temperatures can cause undesirable oxidation, e.g. of omega-3 fatty acids.

🧬 We mix the supplements either as a ‘supplement soup’ (supplements blended with water in a blender) or add them one by one to the mixture. For large quantities of mixture, we recommend the supplement soup method, as it’s easier to mix everything when the mixture is almost spilling over the sides of the bowl.

🌡 Additional taurine. During heat treatment, meat loses some of its taurine. Therefore, just to be on the safe side (the MPD standard already includes an appropriate taurine allowance), the amount of this supplement is increased further. For cats: +50% supplementation (e.g. 6 g of taurine instead of the 4 g in the recipe). We also supplement taurine for dogs: approx. 1 g of taurine for every 1.5 kg of cooked meat. Any excess taurine is easily excreted from the cat’s or dog’s body in their urine.

3️⃣ ❄️ The fridge phase: portioning and storage

💧 The consistency of the mixture depends largely on the amount of water, and it may be that the whole mixture has turned out a bit like ‘soup’. At this stage, you can blend the mixture further to allow it to absorb more water, but here’s another method below.

🌙 We recommend leaving the mixture in the fridge overnight before portioning. The fat will set, and the consistency will become more 'jelly-like'. Freezing the mixture after this 'refrigeration' step will result in a different consistency after thawing than would be the case without this step.

⚖️ The weight of the mixture may differ from what was planned. It is estimated that after about 10 minutes of cooking, the meat loses around 20% of its weight. Therefore, once the consistency is right, when dividing into portions, it is worth checking how many days the mixture is intended to last and dividing it into equal portions after mixing thoroughly. It is worth noting down the weight of the entire mixture – this will help us determine the daily BACF portion later on.

❄️ We freeze in packaging designed for freezing food – this applies to all food – BARF, BACF and human food. For convenience, it is worth remembering or labelling how many days a given package should last.

What should you bear in mind?

ℹ️ ⚖️ Rule: weigh meat raw and vegetables cooked.

ℹ️ ⏱ Rule: cook meat briefly and vegetables for longer.

ℹ️ ☯️ You can make mixed meals, i.e. those where some ingredients are raw and others are cooked.

ℹ️ ❄️ Cooked BARF is a lifesaver for previously frozen meat – after heat treatment, we can freeze such ingredients again.

🏆 👩‍🍳 Can you call yourself a raw feeder if you make the cooked version of BARF? Absolutely! Preparing BACF is more time-consuming than raw mixes, and we commonly understand BACF as a type of BARF, because the term ‘BAF’, at least for now, isn’t in use 😉

Remember that if you have any questions or technical issues with the calculator, you will surely find assistance in our Facebook group (English posts are welcome!). We encourage you to join it, as well as to follow our social media channels, where you will find a wealth of useful knowledge :)

You can also contact us directly at support@meatpoint.io

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