Homemade Dog Food Recipe: Save Money and Keep Your Dog Healthy | Vet Approved

Hi baby, I'm getting ready to cook you up some food. Are you hungry? Oh I bet you are. I bet you are. Good girl, good girl. Hello, welcome back to the buck stop. Today we're going to do something a little different, something a little special, at least it's special to my dog Sable. So a few videos back I spoke about how I ordered for the first time farmer's dog and the box came damaged. The box was damaged, the food was still good, there was nothing wrong with it, it just got a little wet and then it broke apart. It was still a little disappointing that the food came in a broken box on my first time ordering this, so that was a little disappointing. But the second disappointment came when the auto delivery that I signed up for with farmer's dog, the food didn't arrive before I ran out of the first delivery, if that makes sense. So when I contacted farmer's dog they apologized profusely and what they said was we're going to provide you a recipe to make your own dog food to hold Sable over for a couple days until the second delivery arrived. Well that got me thinking, this could potentially happen again and if you're going to provide me the recipe, well why don't I make it myself anyway since I'm going to do it. Well when I did make it myself I found out that actually making it myself, although time-consuming, it's cheaper to make it myself. Plus I have first-hand knowledge of exactly what's going into my dear dog's food and as I stated it's not that hard to do. Now I will say I've done this a few times the last few weeks and I started making it on the on the stovetop in a big pot. We actually blended it so it was more manageable for the dog for Sable to eat and it was a lot of work, a lot of effort, then there was a lot of bowls and a lot of mess. We finally went out and bought something and made life a lot easier and it's the Instant Pot. This 8 quart Instant Pot is big enough for a single week's worth of food but I like to make two weeks worth of food so I double the recipe, it requires me to do two steps. The first step is cooking all the meat, second step is cooking all the vegetables and then they're cooked perfectly and I mix it all up. Cooking an Instant Pot is 25 minutes to cook all the meat and then an additional 25 minutes to cook all the vegetables but there is a little bit of prep work like I've already cut up the potatoes and I cut up the carrots. I also cut off the beef liver that's also in this recipe but anyway as I stated these are all the ingredients. So what we have here is 12 pounds of ground turkey, I've got a bag of frozen green beans, frozen bag of green peas, then this is actually a double serving of spinach, this one can of pumpkin puree, a sprinkle of turmeric at the end, four carrots, so eight carrots, two sweet potatoes, so here's four sweet potatoes and then of course you can buy these sweet, sweet, they're not sweet at all, you can buy this beef liver frozen, each beef liver steak is one serving for this recipe, so there's two beef livers in here that I cut up, they're already frozen and I'll just throw those in with the meat and then of course need rice, you can use brown rice or white rice, we were using white rice for a while because we had it in the house but this time around we're going to use brown rice, obviously it's much healthier and filling for a human so I'm assuming it's going to be a little bit more satisfying for my girl Sable as well, so we're going to go with brown rice this time and see how she likes it, I will say that since she's been on this homemade natural fresh ingredient dog food, she's had a lot more energy, she's lost some weight, she seems happy and she loves it, I haven't seen a dog dance in a long time when it's dinner time like Sable does when we get feed her this food, I've already done a lot of the prep work, so what we're going to do right now, we're going to dump all the meat in the instant pot, cook that and then we'll move on to the vegetables all right, so let's get started, so I don't know how many of you are familiar with instant pots, we've had this for a while and it's a new kitchen tool that we just purchased specifically for cooking the dog food, we have cooked other things with it and so far everything we've made is really good, but for cooking the dog food, we have learned a couple things, if you don't do it a certain way, it will throw a code and will burn to the bottom of the instant pot because this is just a metal insert, so we put a little oil on the bottom all right, just a little bit to coat the bottom, pretty standard in cooking is coating the bottom of the pot, this is the two liver patties, just throw it in there like that and then drop in the ground turkey and what I also like to do is I like to break it up, but just because if it over, if it passes the line, it'll throw some other codes, okay, so I have to rewind the tape a little bit, so I realized the last time we did this, we didn't cook all 12 pounds at one time, we cooked six pounds, we pulled it out, we put the six pounds, another six pounds, so we did it in batches, the instant pot's not big enough to do two weeks worth, 12 pounds and all the vegetables, so I have to do it in stages, it's still easier than doing everything cooking in the oven, cooking on the stove, blending it and all the stuff that we were doing the last time, so I have a rewind and correct my mistake in my instructions, I'm only going to cook for 25 minutes, six pounds and then when that's done, I'll pull that out and put the other six pounds in and we're going to drop a cup of water in there, again it helps with the steaming and the cooking and this is just what we've learned, all right, so basically once you've got you hear that bell, it means it's ready to go, because I've cooked with this thing enough times, as soon as I turn it on, it defaults to 25 minutes, that's all it's going to take, now it will take a few minutes to pressurize and then it'll cook for 25 minutes, that means it's ready to go, you also want, you also want to make sure that this is on sealed, if it's on vent, it'll just let out steam and it won't cook properly, so you want to make this is on sealed and then you turn it on, pressure cooker, it was defaulted to 25 minutes because that's how long it takes from the past that we've done it, at the end of 25 minutes we'll cook the rest of it and really all I have to do now is just wait for it to cook and it will let me know when it's done and then we'll come over and we'll do it all over again, in the magic of editing, I'll snap of a finger, all right, simply enough, release the pressure, open her up and inside you have perfectly cooked ground turkey, I like to use this big strainer thingamabob and I just scoop out all the meat, all right, so now I got all that out and I just drop in the rest of the meat and we repeat what we ordered, like I said earlier, you have to do it in batches because it doesn't all fit but it's still easier than putting everything on the stovetop, multiple pots and multiple bowls, another 25 minutes, so the second batch is complete and just like the first one we just pull out the meat, all right, so now all the meat's cooked and really all that's left is the vegetables, two sweet potatoes but I'm doubling it so here's four sweet potatoes that we're going to put on the bottom, four carrots, so there's eight carrots here, okay, so what we're going to do is we're going to cook the sweet potatoes and the carrots because now they're up to the line and we're going to add a little bit of water, see this line right here, that's the max line, you don't want to go above that, turn it on for 25 minutes, let it cook, all right, we're getting to the end of this, so we'll just put this in another bowl, look at that, smashed up, cooked to nothing, this instapot, it just mashes right up, there's no blending, no food processors, all right, so now sweet potatoes and carrots are done, the only thing left to do now is the brown rice and all of our spinach, peas and green beans and you definitely want your rice to be wet otherwise you won't cook, so give it a good stir so all your rice gets wet, mix it up with your veggies and there's enough liquid in here and the vegetables are going to break down and create liquid, so this is going to come out perfect and now we're in the final stretch, another 25 minutes and we'll be complete and all we have to do is mix it all together, which in itself might be a little bit of an effort, but really all we've done is throw everything in the instapot, let it cook for 25 minutes and mix it all together, so in the end it's not too bad, all right, so I'll see you in another 25 minutes, so almost two hours later we have all the food cooked to the pressure cooker, so this is the final result, here's what our veggies look like, completely cooked and all the rice, I'm fogging up my lens here, so all the rice and vegetables are perfectly cooked in here and now the only thing left to do is to mix it all together, now due to the fact I'm doubling this recipe, I need a bigger container to mix it all up in, so I'm going to use a big tin, we got our meat, I like to break it up a little bit, then we have all the sweet potatoes and carrots and then last but not least all the rice and vegetables and it soaked up all that liquid that was in there, all right, so we're not done just quite yet, we still have a can of pumpkin puree we have to add here, I have a little confession to make, I've been making this for the last couple hours and I thought the last time I did this that I made it all at once, this double recipe and it dawned on me that the last time I made this I made a week's worth on Saturday, here comes tippy-toe, you're making all the noise of your man on the floor, hi, hi, so it dawned on me that Sunday I made it again, so I did make a double recipe so I didn't have to make it only but every two weeks, but I didn't make it all at once, so currently what I'm doing is I'm making this all the same time when really I did it over the course of two days and I thought why not do it all in one day, so I'm starting to realize that this is a lot of food that I have to do a mix, another piece of this recipe is turmeric, so I just bring a little bit off the top here and that's all, just a little bit of turmeric, now what I think I'm gonna attempt to do is put half of it back in this bowl, now that I've got half of it out, I can mix it up in here, all right, so now that I've got half mixed up, I think a great idea off the top of my head, I just thought about this, is I get a five gallon pail, I could throw all this in there, need an attachment on my drill, well I could stir it up that way, got these containers, fill these containers up, my girl Sable has joined me because she smells all this wonderful food I'm making for her, are you hungry, you want some of this good delicious food that I'm making, oh you can't stay away, okay, now what you're saying to yourself, boy this does not look as simple as you made it sound in the very beginning of this video, and you're making quite the mess, my wife would agree with you, I am making a mess, but it's a mess worth making, because my dog, she just loves this food, and it's so good for her, and it's a lot cheaper, although it's a little bit of effort, a little bit of mess, all right, let's get some more containers, I have some more room in this one, never see you, never see yourself lick your fingers out to open a can of Purina from the dog store, huh, with this it's all natural, I'll also admit that I'm just not very neat, I'm just not very neat in the kitchen, no matter what I'm doing, and my wife will admit to that one too, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, here's about two, maybe three weeks of food, she gets a cup of, she gets a heaping cup in the morning, and a heaping cup in the afternoon, she's a hundred pound dog, and that's plenty for gives her all the nutrients, all the vegetables, all the beef, all the protein, everything a healthy dog needs, but I want to share one more thing with you, I said this was, not sure, I'd have to rewind the tape, but I think I said this was an easy task, and by using the Instapot, it simplified the process, and made it less messy, well here, let me show you something, it may not be quite as mess-free as I made it sound, because look, I got this big thing here, I got this bowl here, I got this bowl, and there's the Instapot bowl, this is actually frozen food that we're defrosting, that we took out of the freezer, we've got two more of those in there, so this is just in preparation, this and what we have in the freezer, should probably get through about four weeks, so anyway, full disclosure, it probably wasn't as clean, but I will say this, the more I do it, the better I get at it, I have learned a lesson every time, I've only been doing this for about, I don't know, six weeks, and like I admitted, I thought I cooked this all in one day, last time I did it, and I didn't, I did it over the course of two days, that's why everything fit, it kind of went simple and fast, doing it all in one day, proved to have its challenges, because I didn't have bowls big enough to hold everything, but like I said, I think what I'm going to do, is I'm going to go get a five-gallon pail, and I'm going to throw everything in the five-gallon pail, and that should probably be big enough to hold all this food, so maybe, and I'll even let you all know if this happens, when I cook the food, starting with the meat, I'll just dump it in the five-gallon pail, cook the next batch, throw in the pail, cook the next batch, throw in the pail, and then I can just stir it all in the pail, and I'm really making less of a mess, and then I can squirt it out with the hose, so just an idea, anyway, I don't know if this is appealing to you or not, I will say that this works for me, she loves it, she's thriving on it, she's losing weight, she's doing really well on it, and I feel much better giving it to her, and it is cheaper, buying this from Farmer's Market was double what I'm spending, anyway, I hope you enjoyed this video, and if you did get any value out of it, consider subscribing, homemade dog food made in Buck's Kitchen, all right, well, thanks for watching, thanks for spending some time with me, if you like this video, give me a thumbs up, and I'll see you next time.