Cooked Dog Food Recipes

For those who prefer to cook for their dog, here are a few healthy dog food recipes to get you started.

These will smell like gourmet meals to you and have the nutrients your dog must have for health.

Below the cooked dog food recipes I'll list substitutions for variety. After all, variety is the spice of life for our dogs too!

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Ground Beef & Rice Dinner

• 1 lb of ground beef (lean)
• 1 cup of chopped green beans & carrots (or any 2 different color*)
• 1 cup of brown rice
• 1 clove minced garlic
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
• 1 teaspoon ground bone meal

In medium size saucepan bring 2-1/2 cups water to a boil while chopping up green beans, carrots and garlic. Add these veggies and garlic to boiling water and bring to a boil again. Stir in rice, cover and reduce to simmer for 40 minutes. Brown ground beef. Chop fresh parsley and mix in with ground beef along with the bone meal and set aside to cool. (parsley turns bitter if cooked more than a few minutes.) When rice/veggie mix is done, remove from heat and let stand 5 minutes with lid on. Fluff with a fork so it doesn’t stick together and let cool. Mix with beef.

If you want to share this dog food recipe with your dog, save the bone meal for just his portion ;-)

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• 1 pound turkey
• 1 potato
• 1 carrot
• 1 celery
• 1 clove minced garlic
• 1 cup cooked brown rice
• 1 teaspoon ground bone meal

Cut the meat, potato, carrot and celery into small pieces. Place in pan with garlic and enough water to cover. Bring to a boil then simmer for 30 minutes. Add the cooked rice, bone meal and stir.

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Chicken and Barley Dinner

• 2 pounds boneless chicken thighs cut up
• 2 cups chopped broccoli and carrots
• 4 cups cooked barley
• 1 clove minced garlic
• 2 teaspoons ground bone meal

In saucepan, bring 3 cups water to a boil. Add chicken, broccoli, carrots and garlic. Cook on medium heat for 20 minutes. Add cooked barley, bone meal and stir.

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Note About Bone Meal

Always include the bone meal in these dog food recipes. The amount is carefully chosen to correspond to the amount of meat and keep your dog's food balanced for absorption of nutrients.

Why bone meal? It's a great source of calcium for dogs. Please read about it and why it's so important.

Reheating

These dog food recipes can be served cold. I seriously doubt your dog will care. Or you can let them warm up to room temperature before serving.

Just remember this - NEVER microwave, even to warm food. It kills ALL the nutrients and defeats the purpose.

Meats and Eggs

I started out by feeding chicken, turkey and beef because that's what I could get easily and I was comfortable with. Now I realize there isn't a meat my dogs don't like, so try different things. Hamburger is my least favorite because of the fat content but sometimes I find ten pound beef roasts on sale for a great price. I then cut them up into smaller portions. Some for the dogs and some for us!

Organ meat is important but should be only 5 to 10% of their total diet.

You can add a little to any of these recipes or once a week serve one of these dog food recipes using hearts or livers.

Eggs are also a great source of protein for your dog. You can substitute 4 large lightly scrambled eggs for 1/2 pound of meat in these recipes.

Egg shells are a great source of calcium for dogs, but I personally find it too much trouble to wash, bake and grind the eggshells so I use the bone meal powder as a calcium supplement.

Vegetables & Fruits

Green veggies - cabbage, kale, broccoli, green beans, celery, spinach, bell peppers, mustard greens, turnip greens, beet greens (I'll try anything green but if anyone gets gas from it, I take it off the list)

Orange veggies - carrots, sweet potatoes, bell pepper and pumpkin (plain pumpkin is good for diarrhea and constipation)

Other color veggies - beets, potatoes, zucchini, yellow squash

Fruits - apples, bananas, and blueberries are the favorites (remember no apple seeds)

Grains

Grains may be the most common dog food allergen and from my personal experience, WHEAT and CORN are the biggest culprits so you won't see any form of wheat or corn in my dog food recipes. I feed brown rice, oats and quinoa.

Remember if you feed white rice, it has been stripped of all its nutrients so there isn't much point. It's kind of an 'empty' food.

Beans for Dogs?

In 2010 I added pinto beans to the dog diet! I was sure they'd get terrible gas but I cook from scratch, soaking them 12 hours beforehand. I can't believe how much they love them! And there's no gas!

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Variety is good to avoid canine food allergies. Just about any one thing eaten day after day can eventually cause this problem. Also, by varying the meats, grains and veggies there is a greater variety of vitamins and minerals.

As of March 2010 I finally switched my dogs to a raw meat diet. I feel they get more nutrition this way. I still feed some whole cooked grains but grind their raw veggies in the food processor and they couldn't be happier.

Cooking Tip

Whenever you end up with leftover cooking water,- KEEP IT. Instead of throwing that nutrition down the sink, put it in a separate bowl for drinking. Once cooled, I serve any leftover water from boiling meat, potatoes and veggies to my dogs who think I made it special just for them! Their favorite? Potato water!

*Remember there's a lot of vegetable varieties to choose from and that different colored vegetables have different vitamins, so mix and match by color!

I hope you enjoy these dog food recipes.

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