Learn how to make minced & moist food, a specific diet level of the International Dysphagia Diet Standardization Initiative. The minced & moist diet may be prescribed to people who have limited ability to chew food. The information presented here focuses on preparing the diet for adults. I share how to make it, which foods you should avoid, tips, and meal ideas.
Free DIRECT download: Guide to making minced & moist food (patient handout). (Email subscribers get free access to all the resources in the Free Subscription Library.)
Outline:
- Who is minced & moist food for?
- What is IDDSI?
- Level 5 minced & moist food.
- Easily test if your food is minced & moist.
- Are there any foods I should avoid?
- What do I need to make minced & moist food?
- Give me some tips for mincing food.
- How about some meal ideas?
- Related Eat, Speak, & Think posts.
Who is minced & moist food for?
Minced & Moist foods are often prescribed by speech-language pathologists or other medical professionals to people who have trouble chewing food, a condition called oral dysphagia. People who have oral dysphagia may also have pharyngeal dysphagia, which affects the throat muscles.
People may have oral dysphagia due to problems with their teeth or dentures or difficulty moving their tongue well enough to chew.
Common medical problems that cause or contribute to dysphagia include stroke, Alzheimer’s dementia, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, and oral cancer.
People who have trouble chewing or swallowing food or liquid should ask their physician for a referral to a speech-language pathologist or other professional who is qualified to diagnose and treat swallow problems.
What is IDDSI?
IDDSI stands for the International Dysphagia Diet Standardisation Initiative. It started in 2013 when professionals from diverse backgrounds from around the world formed a committee.
IDDSI is “A global initiative to improve the lives of over 590 million people worldwide living with dysphagia”.
iddsi.org
IDDSI has developed a global dysphagia diet standard, which allows people to follow the same prescribed dysphagia diet as they move between home and hospital or rehab center or nursing home. The diet includes descriptions of food levels from Level 7 Regular or Easy-to-Chew solid food to Level 3 Liquidized food, as well as liquids of different thicknesses.
Level 5 Minced & Moist Food
Minced & moist foods are classified as IDDSI Level 5 (handout) on a scale from Level 3 Liquidized to Level 7 Regular/Easy-to-Chew foods.
For adults, minced foods are foods that are cut into pieces no larger than 4 mm in size, small enough to fit between the tines of a fork. Minced food should be soft, not sticky or firm.
Easily test if your food is minced & moist
Here is an easy way to decide if you have prepared minced & moist food. If you can answer “yes” to both tests, and your food is not sticky or firm, then you have prepared minced & moist food. You can tell if a food is minced & moist if it passes the IDDSI Fork Test and the IDDSI Spoon Tilt Test.
- The IDDSI Fork Test: can the pieces fit between the tines of a standard dinner fork?
- The IDDSI Spoon Tilt Test: Scoop up a sample of the food. When you tilt the spoon (you can lightly flick it), does the food hold its shape and fall off easily?
Are there any foods I should avoid?
Yes, there are foods that are hard to mince, or hard to swallow even if minced. The IDDSI handout on Level 5 Minced & Moist has a chart that lists the types of food you should avoid. I’ll share the categories of food. Check out their handout to see specific examples for each category.
- Mixed thin & thick textures.
- Hard or dry food.
- Tough or fibrous food.
- Chewy food.
- Crispy or crunchy food.
- Sharp or spiky food.
- Crumbly bits.
- Pips or seeds.
- Food with skins or outer shell or husks.
- Bone or gristle.
- Round, long shaped food.
- Sticky or gummy food.
- Stringy food.
- Floppy foods.
- Crust formed during cooking or heating.
- Juicy food.
- Large or hard lumps of food.
What do I need to make minced & moist food?
While I love to cook, I make pureed food more often than I make minced & moist foods. I have some great recipes for pureed soups, and I’ve found that I can sip these as I drive from one patient’s home to the next.
But I do mince foods, using a sharp knife and a middle-of-the-road Cuisineart food processor.
A sharp knife (with tutorial)
I often mince garlic or onion or other vegetables by hand, using a sharp knife. The process is simple. Just be sure to look through your pile of minced food to make sure there are no big pieces.
You can mince foods by hand, but if someone is eating a minced & moist diet, this would be rather time-consuming.
A good food processor (with tutorial)
A food processor with a standard chopping blade is very handy for mincing foods. A “good” food processor has a strong motor and a sharp blade. Some food processors come with a dicing attachment. If you’re buying a new one, I recommend reading some customer reviews.
Cut the food into chunks before adding to your machine. Start with a single layer until you know how much your device can use.
Use the “pulse” feature, repeating until your food is in small pieces. You may need to use a knife to make a final pass over the food if some pieces aren’t quite small enough.
Other tools that might be useful
A blender may work for some types of food. You may find that you can use other tools, such as an onion chopper, a blender, a potato masher, a potato ricer, or a food mill.
These tools will probably work better for some types of foods than others, so you may need to experiment a little.
Give me some tips for mincing food
The good tips come from the Dysphagia Foods & Recipes Group on Facebook. I like to cook, so I’ve added a few suggestions as well.
- Ask the meat department to mince your meat.
- Buy ground meat, cook, then pulse in the food processor until small enough
- When using a food processor, use the pulse mode. Stop pulsing when the pieces are small enough.
- Mince foods separately to retain flavor.
Ideas for liquids to add
It’s important to add some liquid or moisture, either while mincing the food or afterward, so the food doesn’t get dry. Adding liquid to the food processor may make it easier for the blade to cut the food, or it may cause the food to turn out more like a puree. Part of the process is to stop hitting the pulse button when the pieces are small enough.
Here are some examples:
- Low sodium gravy.
- Broth.
- Pureed soup.
- Tomato sauce.
- Alfredo or Hollandaise sauce.
- Salad dressing.
- Butter or margarine.
- Sour cream.
- Yogurt.
- Mayonnaise.
- Milk or a supplement.
- Orange, apple, or cranberry juice.
- Lemon or lime juice.
Mincing raw meat
You can buy ground beef, chicken, or turkey. If you cook the meat in a skillet, use your spatula to break it up into small pieces. Then add it to a food processor and pulse it until the pieces are small enough.
It appears that mincing your own meat tastes better than buying ground meat. I don’t eat meat, so you’ll have to be judge of that. However, the trick is to partially freeze the meat by placing on a tray or in a bowl in the freezer for 15-20 minutes.
You can mince raw meat straight from the fridge, or you can partially freeze it. Firming up the meat before mincing in your food processor may make it easier for the blade to cut it.
Here’s a video demonstrating how to mince room temperature raw meat with a food processor. (Just keep hitting pulse until the pieces are small enough.)
If you’re going to mince by hand, partially freeze the meat first. This makes it easier to cut into small enough pieces. See this video for how to mince raw meat by hand:
How about some meal ideas?
You can mince just about any meal, since mincing is simply cutting it up into very small pieces. However, if you’re looking for some meal ideas, here are some I adapted from the Dysphagia Foods & Recipes Group on Facebook.
- Pancakes minced in a food processor or with a good onion chopper. Add syrup, applesauce, or minced soft fruit.
- Cooked sausage minced well, then mix in scrambled eggs and add white gravy.
- Tacos with beans: Cook ground beef or ground turkey with taco seasoning. Mince the meat well with some shredded cheese and put into a bowl. Add refried beans, salsa verde, and sour cream. Squeeze on some fresh lime juice.
- Sloppy Joes: Cook ground beef or ground turkey with a can of Sloppy Joe sauce (or make your own). Mince well and serve on the bottom of a hamburger roll that has been minced with an onion chopper. Allow the sauce to soak into the bread before eating.
- Chicken salad: Cook chicken, then allow to cool. Mince the meat, and put into a bowl. Mince some pickled onion and add it to the bowl with some mayonnaise. Optional: remove crust from soft bread and mince with an onion chopper or food processor. Make a thin sauce by mixing some mayonnaise with lime juice. Allow the bread to soak up the sauce so it’s moist. Add the chicken salad on top.
- Cookies can be minced with plain or flavored yogurt.
- Cake can be eaten by soaking in milk, then mincing.
Related Eat, Speak, & Think posts
- A practical guide to pureed food at home.
- How to make pureed food taste good.
- Take the guesswork out of thickening liquids with the IDDSI flow test.
Free DIRECT download: Guide to making minced & moist food (patient handout). (Email subscribers get free access to all the resources in the Free Subscription Library.)
Featured image by Vitalii Borkovskyi on Canva.com.
Lisa earned her M.A. in Speech-Language Pathology from the University of Maryland, College Park and her M.A. in Linguistics from the University of California, San Diego.
She participated in research studies with the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) and the University of Maryland in the areas of aphasia, Parkinson’s Disease, epilepsy, and fluency disorders.
Lisa has been working as a medical speech-language pathologist since 2008. She has a strong passion for evidence-based assessment and therapy, having earned five ASHA Awards for Professional Participation in Continuing Education.
She launched EatSpeakThink.com in June 2018 to help other clinicians be more successful working in home health, as well as to provide strategies and resources to people living with problems eating, speaking, or thinking.
Learn how to make minced & moist sandwiches:
https://youtu.be/W7bOufqmz18?si=2zrhk6MfT9lLn6ii
Read Karen Sheffler’s interesting post on why bread is an IDDSI Level 7 regular food item, no matter how soft it is. This is where I found the recipe for how to make minced & moist sandwiches.
https://swallowstudy.com/bread-of-life-evidence-on-choking-risks-with-bread/
What can I do with Ham?
Hi Valerie, great question. My three best ideas would be (1) deviled ham/ham salad/ham spread, (2) ham soup, or (3) maybe a ham pot pie? You can do a search to find recipes that appeal to you.
For a ham spread sandwich, you could try mincing the bread after adding butter or mayo to keep it from being too dry. Or maybe add some broth or gravy after the bread is minced.
For the ham soup, you could mince the ingredients before cooking the soup, or you could use an immersion blender when its finished. You could set aside some cooked minced ham to add to the soup after it’s pureed. (I love to puree my soups.) Most soups freeze well, so I try to make double batches for easy meals later on.
For the pot pie, you could make as normal. If you mince the ingredients before cooking, when it’s done, you could scoop out the middle, then mince the crust by hand, then put them together.