Dog Food – Home cooked
Many of you know that we have a five pack and we cook for them on a weekly basis. This ensure that they get additional nutrients in addition to their normal kibble. We started cooking for the pack many years ago and continue today. This is one of our normal meals that we fix for them. If your pack is not as large you may want to scale this recipe back so that your pack isn’t eating the same thing day in and day out. Our pack likes a variety of flavors so we mix it up a bit and I will post those recipes in future additions.
Ingredients
5 lbs of ground beef (I use a higher fat content for the pack)
2 lbs of chicken liver (I tried beef liver but the pack didn’t care for it. Your pack may be different so feel free to use beef liver if you would like)
2 lbs of mixed veggies
2 lbs of green beans
1-1/2 lbs of Orzo pasta
Directions
Place the 2 lbs of liver in your pan (we use a large turkey roaster)
Crumble up the 5 lbs of ground beef into your pan. I just break it up into large chunks so that they will cook faster.
Add about 1 quart of water and start cooking. You just want to put enough water that your meat will not stick or burn while cooking. Too much water and the next step is a bit harder to do without splashing the hot water on you.
Once your meat is done, usually about 45 min. to an hour for us, take your potato masher and break up the hamburger and liver into smaller pieces.
Don’t be afraid to get in there…. When I get finished the meat is usually about the size of a good browned ground beef, nice small pieces
Now add in the veggies, stir to mix and add enough water that you are just about covering everything.
Cook for another 45 min. to an hour, or until the veggies are just about done.
Stir in the pasta and cook until the pasta is done. Keep and eye on your pan while you are cooking the pasta as it will absorb the liquid and you may need to add additional water while it’s cooking. You don’t want your food to be too dry as it’s harder to put in the jars for storage.
Once your pasta is done turn off the heat and let your food sit for a while to cool down so that you can put it in storage containers.
We have tried many different storage containers over the years and the ones that we find work the best are half pint canning jars. We bought several cases to ensure that we had enough and the extras I used for canning food for the humans in the house 🙂
Fill your jars with the food leaving about a half inch space between the food and the top of the jar. This will allow some expansion room during the reheating process and will not pop out while reheating in the microwave.
Once you have all your jars filled, let them cool down before putting the tops on or putting them in the refrigerator.
We cool our food down quickly by lining the jars up leaving space around them and then turning a 12″ fan on them for about an hour. This rapidly cools the food down. Believe me your refrigerator will appreciate this cool down period. Putting the piping hot jars direct into the refrigerator really does strain it and will cause it to run for hours on end to cool down the food.
Once the food is cooled down, put the lids on and place them in the refrigerator for storage until you are ready to use them.
If you do make a large batch and want to freeze the food because your pack isn’t as big as ours, I recommend you purchase containers that are not glass as the canning jars will sometimes break in the freezer due to the expansion of the food as it freezes.
This recipe will provide us with approximately 8 to 9 days of food for the pack.
To reheat the food, we just take the chill off of it but you can serve it cold if you like, just pull the tops off the jars, flats as well as rings, and place in the microwave.
You don’t want to use full power!!!!! to heat the food or it will pop out of the jar and make a huge mess in your microwave… I have forgotten to turn the power down and had quite the mess to clean up afterwards 🙁 No Fun!!! For our 5 jars we usually heat for 7 minutes at half power. This is based on our microwave. You will have to play with times and power on yours so that you get the food warm but not too hot and so it doesn’t make a mess while it’s reheating.
Equipment
Turkey Roaster or other pan that will hold everything
Potato Masher
Wooden Spoon
Jars (approx. 45 for us)