Freeze dried - do you break up food before serving?

Just been curious recently how others do this. We've been feeding freeze-dried food from Primal and Stella & Chewys for months on and off to our two cats. Except for the earliest few bowls we settled on breaking apart the pieces before even putting in the water. Seems almost mandatory for Primal nuggets but for S&C small pieces it probably could be optional to break up at all.

Among other things it seems the fastest way to hydrate the food (and thus get it to the cats) if pieces are broken up small. I add so much water that it comes out pretty soupy, and the cats seem to like it that way most of the time. Haven't fed any Primal for a while so all recent experience is with S&C.

So how do you serve your freeze dried food?

We feed both Primal and Stella & Chewy's -- usually together, in various combos -- and break it up, too. One cat prefers slightly larger pieces than the other and has to have a mound of food (oh, cats!) but I can usually get a little extra water in the "moat" around the mound. I sprinkle one Stella & Chewy's on top of each meal.

I usually add the water first (about two tablespoons) to the saucers I'm serving the nugget (Primal - the cats don't like S&C's) in, then I crumble the food up and mash and mix it into the water using a small fork (olive / cocktail fork) which works perfectly to hydrate the nugget quickly -- the whole things takes less than one minute, easy peasy.

Oh - I did try S&C's a few times and I did the same as above to hydrate the food.

I leave the pieces whole (Stelly and Chewy), add water, then let it sit in the fridge for a bit to re-hydrate. Nora seems to prefer the whole pieces raher than me breaking them up. ....she's a bit of a diva these days

I leave Stella and Chewy's whole and dry (fed as treats only). The cats like to crunch the nuggets.

I've never fed the Primal freeze dried but those rectangular shaped nuggets should be broken at least in half for easier eating.

Anything is much easier and faster to rehydrate if broken up into small pieces