Homemade Dog Food

When I’ve made homemade dog food, I’ve always frozen it in small containers. Frozen, or even storebought canned dog food can be inconvenient for traveling Today I’m going to freeze dry the homemade dog food. To feed Rita, all we’ll have to do is put a bit (maybe 1/4 cup) in her bowl, add a little water and if it’s convenient, we’ll add a teaspoon of coconut oil.

Ingredients I Use:

• Ground turkey or beef
• Chicken livers
• Eggs
• Fresh ginger
• Frozen peas, carrots and broccoli (or fresh)
• Rice
• Hemp Hearts/seeds
• Blueberries
• Bananas

I do not use a real recipe. The proportions I like to use are about 40% protein, 10% fat and 50% veggies.

The Process:

This can all be done on the stove but I use the Instant Pot.

• Place turkey in the IP and saute til done. It probably will not get brown. Doesn’t matter.
• Add rice.
• Add frozen veggies.
• Place liver in a pot with about 2 cups water and boil til it’s done. Using a slotted spoon, remove liver.
• Pour boiling water into a measuring cup and add water if needed so there’s 1.5 times as much liquid as rice.
• Pour liquid into IP.
• Add egg(s) to IP and cook under pressure for 14 minutes.
• Place liver in food processor and process til it’s a paste. Remove to bowl.
• Add egg shell(s) to food process, along with the ginger and process til smooth and the egg shells are not visible. Add to liver bowl.
• Place blueberries in food processor bowl and process til they’re about the texture of a paste.

Once IP has finished, release pressure. Remove contents to a bowl and allow to cool. Stir in liver, blueberries, ginger/egg shell mixture. Mash bananas with a fork on a plate and scrape into the bowl. Add a bit of spirulina and hemp seeds if desired.

This can be frozen in meal size portions.

Freeze Drying:

My plan was to put the dog food into mini muffin tins, freeze it in the freezer, then dump it onto the freeze dryer trays and freeze dry it. Often, the food breaks apart very easily once it’s freeze dried. Once the mini muffins are in jars, they will probably all break apart anyway. That’s when I decided to make it easy on myself and spread the concoction out on trays. After it’s freeze dried, I will simply break it apart and put it into jars.

When it’s time to feed it to Rita, we’ll put the amount of food needed into a bowl, add a little water to reconstitute, add about a teaspoon of coconut oil to each bowl of food. I had been mixing the coconut oil in before freezing but since the freeze dryer does better with less (or no) oil, we’ll just add that later.

That’s all there is to it! Yummy, safe, healthy dog food made at home!