Make 7 Days of Vet-Approved Dog Food in 60 Minutes

In this video, I'm going to show you how to make seven days of vet-approved dog food in about 60 minutes using ingredients that you can get at any grocery store. And I'm giving you the full recipe totally free so that you can follow along with me. Now, I didn't come up with this recipe. A veterinary nutritionist did. So everything you're about to see is formulated to be complete and balanced by a credentialed expert. This is not a random Facebook recipe. This is the real thing. And by the end of this video, you're going to know what to buy, how to make it, and exactly what it would cost for your specific dog, which honestly might surprise you. One of the craziest statistics I have ever heard is that 95% of homemade dog food recipes are not complete and balanced. That means that 95% of recipes online will result in your dog getting some sort of nutrient deficiency, which is honestly so insane when you think about it. And that's exactly why we had our recipe formulated by veterinary nutritionist, Dr. Danielle Conway. And Dr. Conway is not just some random internet person with a nutrition certification. She completed three years of advanced training after vet school, solely focused on one thing. What should go into your dog's food and why? So here's what we're making today. This is our balanced beef and turkey recipe. And as you can see, we have different ingredient amounts. So what I'll do is choose my dog's weight. She's 35 pounds and I'll highlight the ingredients in the 35 pound column and I'll write those down. But this recipe is only for one day of food and I want to make seven days. So I'm going to take each ingredient and multiply it by seven so I can get that week's worth of food. The scaling chart goes from five pounds all the way to 200 pounds. So literally any adult dog can use these recipes. Now let's go to the store. I'm at Walmart today because I'm trying to make this as budget friendly as I can, but you can get the whole food ingredients at any grocery store. The first thing we need is our protein. Meat really is the star of this recipe. It makes up the majority of what your dog is eating. And Dr. Conway built this recipe to be protein forward, which is exactly how it should be. Now you might hear people say that you should only feed dogs meat. And yes, meat is a super important part of a dog's diet, but meat only diets are missing fiber and essential vitamins and minerals. That's why this recipe includes vegetables. From here, we only have a few more things that we need to grab. Excuse us. This is a grain inclusive recipe, so we are getting some grains. Okay. And that's all the whole foods, which makes up like 95% of the entire recipe. But there are a few more things that we need that take these whole foods from almost complete to fully complete and balanced. As I've been working with Dr. Conway on these new recipes, I found myself asking her, why can't we just rely on whole foods to make this complete and balanced without adding extra things? And her answer was basically that whole foods are doing the heavy lifting. They're covering the vast majority of your dog's nutrition, but some nutrients are really hard to hit with whole foods alone, like vitamin E or even copper. For example, if you're relying on beef liver for copper, one liver from one supplier could have a ton of it. And another one from a different supplier might have very little copper in it. We're talking massive differences for the exact same cut of meat and too much copper is just as dangerous as too little. So instead of guessing and hoping, we had a few targeted supplements to close those gaps. That way, you know, your dog is covered every time you make this. And I'll explain why we add each of them and what each one actually does when we start cooking here in a little. When I first reached out to Dr. Conway about this recipe, I told her that the number one thing I needed outside of the recipe being properly formulated is that it has to be easy. Everything has to be cooked in one pot. That's it. Because if making homemade dog food feels like a whole production, nobody's going to stick with it. I'm certainly not going to stick with it. So she built this recipe to work in an instant pot, in a slow cooker, or what I'm using today, just a pot on the stove with a lid. Now, before we actually get started, we need to do arguably the most important step of this entire process. We need to weigh our ingredients. I know this sounds extra, but this recipe was formulated down to the gram. And if you just start throwing stuff in the pot randomly, you're not making Dr. Conway's recipe anymore. You're making your own. And we know some of the statistics about homemade dog food recipes out there. A kitchen scale like this is 15 to 20 bucks on Amazon. And it really is the difference between a balanced meal and a random guess. I'm weighing out everything for a 35 pound dog times seven, including 90, 10 ground beef, 93, seven ground turkey, white rice, carrots. And I know I showed a lot of fresh produce, but I actually prefer to buy all of my fruits and veggies frozen as well as green beans. Now the grains need more liquid to cook properly. So I'm just going to top it off with water until it's a stew like consistency and important note here. Do not drain the liquid in homemade dog food ever. Even if it's the fat in the meat, the cooking liquid has nutrients in it. The beef has fat in it. All of which is accounted for in the formulation. Now, if you're cooking this on the stove, you want to stir every five minutes or so to try and prevent anything from burning. You'll know it's done when the meat is fully cooked. The veggies are soft and the grains look like they've started to absorb a good amount of water. Now from here, we need to let this cool completely before we actually add our supplements. And the last time I posted a homemade food video, I got absolutely roasted for how I cool my food down. I put it in the fridge still warm and people lost their minds. Here's my thinking though. The danger zone for bacteria is between 40 and 140 degrees. So the goal is to get this food through that range and under 40 degrees as quickly as possible. Leaving it on the counter means it sits in that danger zone way longer than putting it in the fridge. Now the argument that hot food could warm up the other stuff in the fridge is valid. I get that. And I only put this in our garage drink fridge. But I still feel like it's somehow less risky to put it in a cold fridge than it would be to just leave it out on the counter. I don't know. You can tell me I'm wrong in the comments. All right. This has now fully cooled down and it's time to do the step of the process that separates this recipe from every single other recipe on the internet. The supplements. Now remember the whole foods are handling the vast majority of your dog's nutrition in this recipe. The supplements are just added to help close those gaps that food alone can't reliably cover. So to this recipe, I'm adding omega-3 fatty acids. We're using Nordic Naturals omega-3 pet liquid and there's really solid research showing omega-3s can help with joint health, skin and coat and even managing inflammation. But here's what nobody talks about. Those benefits only happen at specific dosages. Most pet food companies either skip omega-3s entirely or include so little it's not doing anything for your dog. Dr. Conway made sure this recipe has omega-3s at levels that can actually make a difference. Next up we have choline. Choline is essential for your dog's brain and liver function. It's one of those nutrients that a lot of homemade recipes miss entirely and most dogs aren't getting enough of it from food alone. After that bone meal. Your dog needs both calcium and phosphorus and bone meal has both. Next we have taurine. Taurine is an amino acid that's really important for your dog's heart health. Some dogs can make enough on their own but Dr. Conway adds it here to make sure your dog isn't falling short. After that iodized salt and before anyone freaks out this is not for flavor. Your dog needs iodine and chloride and this is the simplest way to get both. And finally a daily multivitamin. We're using Now Daily Vitz and this is one of the things that I love about how Dr. Conway builds recipes. Instead of having you buy like 12 different individual supplements she uses a multivitamin to cover a bunch of different micronutrients in one shot. It keeps it simple and affordable which is the entire point. And now we mix all this together and I mean really mix it. Every bite your dog takes should have a pretty even distribution of everything we just added. If the supplements are all clumped up in one area one meal could have a super high concentration of vitamins and minerals and the other might not have enough. Not necessarily the worst thing in the world but certainly not ideal. All right we just made seven days worth of homemade dog food but this is just one giant pot and I really have no way of knowing how much my dog needs to eat just by looking at this. What I do is I grab seven containers and these can be any sort of meal prep containers you want. We like stasher bags and glass Pyrex. Again I'm on the budget friendly train today so we're going with classic Ziploc bags. I'm also just putting a glove on because the food gets on my knuckles and I'm a little bit of a sensory guy and I can't stand that. Speaking of sensory what the... Pro tip flip your Ziploc bags inside out just on the rim that way you don't get so much stuff on the actual part that is supposed to stick together. Now you don't have to be perfectly exact here but we do want to try to get as close to an even distribution as we can across these seven containers. But what I'll do is at the end I'll kind of just look at them all see if any of them look a little low. If they do I'll just take some from a different one that looks like it has a little too much and add it to the low one. Just a friendly reminder too that if there was any cooking liquid at the bottom of this we would want to make sure all of that gets evenly distributed into these bags as well. That cooking liquid is going to have a ton of nutrients in it. Luckily I did pretty good with my water level this recipe. Now from here I'm going to take three days worth and throw that into the fridge for the next couple of days and put the rest into the freezer. You don't want this food sitting in your fridge for more than like two to three days defrosted. Anyone else's fridge looks just like this? When you need your next batch just go to your freezer pull it out the night or two before and let it defrost in your fridge. Also this recipe will last around two to three months in the freezer so you have plenty of time especially if you want to make bigger batches than just the seven days I made. All right let's talk about the price because I know that's been on your mind this entire video. Here's the weekly cost to feed your dog this recipe depending on what weight they are and here's how that compares to a popular kibble like Purina Pro Plan as well as a store-bought fresh food like the farmer's dog. Again if you want this recipe it's totally free with this QR code or the link in the description below but if cooking just isn't your thing no stress at all. I made a video on the best commercial dog foods of 2026 which you can watch right here.