After our video of the excited doggie awaiting his ‘Crack Pot’ dog food, I’ve had dozens of requests for the recipe. So…here it is!

Ingredients: Anything that’s not on the ‘harmful to dogs’ list.

Directions: Cook the crap out of it, adding water as needed. Cool, and serve.

That’s really all you need to know. If you want more details, read on.

 

 

The Premise: It doesn’t matter if it’s Iams, Science Diet, Blue Buffalo, Alpo, or even Old Roy, store bought dog food is made of scraps from food processing plants, and it is literally all of the stuff they won’t feed to people. Skin, cartilage, connective tissues, etc. It’s the nastiest stuff you can imagine. This being said, we’d rather feed our dogs “people food” before dog food any day of the week. Period.

In our opinion, paying $35+ for a bag of dried scraps, filled of chemicals and preservatives is just stupid. I wouldn’t feed my kids a diet of dried cornstartch, expired flower, and beef jerky, so why would I do that to our dogs?

What do you think people fed their dogs in the 1700’s? Scraps! Dogs in the wild? Raw meat and vegetables!

Dogs are Omnivores, they eat literally anything. This is the same creature that chews on old bones, loves to drink from the toilet, and snacks on ‘treats’ from the litter box. They truly don’t care what they eat. Wouldn’t you rather have them eating your leftovers and old vegetables?

 

Portions: The size of the recipe is based on the size of your crock pot.

It can also be cooked on the stove in a big stock pot, or in your over in a roasting pan. Whatever works for you and your kitchen. We have one of the largest crock pots on the market, and make one batch every week to feed our two 20 lb. terriers.

Ingredients:

We try to keep each category to 1/3, but it’s just a loose guideline. As long as it’s not on the “Unhealthy for Dogs” list on the infographic below, you’re good to go. Other that that, try to add what your dog likes, and avoid what they don’t like. DO NOT PRE-COOK ANYTHING! Put it all in the pot, and let it go.

1. The Base: Start with about half of your crock-pot full of water. Add some Rice, Oatmeal, and Beans. We use Brown Rice and Pinto Beans, but any variety will work fine. Canned beans work, but uncooked beans are much, much cheaper.

We do 1/3 each, but you can use any combination you’d like based on what you have on hand or what’s cheapest at the store. You’ll be adding water regularly throughout the process. Better to have too much water than not enough.

2. Proteins: Any meat you can find, as cheap as you can find it.

We’ve used hamburger meat, pork chops that were marked down to $1.50 per pound, sometimes a whole fryer chicken (those are always cheap), and once we used venison that was freezer burned.

Put the meat in the pot raw unless it has a lot of small bones. Cook it with the rice/beans/oatmeal base to let all of the flavors, au jus, and nutrients soak in, and then pull the bones after cooking.

We’ve also put in cooked eggs, leftover fish, and the leftovers from whatever meals we didn’t reheat. Rotisserie chickens are the best, after boiling down the bones into chicken stock.

Also, we’ve put water in with the ends of jar of Peanut Butter, shook like crazy to get the jar clean enough to recycle, and then poured the PB/Water combo into the pot to for liquid. Dogs go crazy for peanut butter.

3. Vegetables & Fruits: We use the Dog Food container like we do our compost bucket. If it’s old, it goes in the dog food. If it’s too old for the dog food, it gets composted.

Our dogs like Green Beans, Celery, Apples, and Carrots for snacks, so we always use those in the dog food. A big bag of unpeeled carrots or celery is around $2, and you simply cut it up, unwashed and unpeeled, tops and all.

We also put in any vegetables we have in the house that are wilting or starting to go bad. They like it when we include potatoes, asparagus, cabbage and even squash. Lettuce ends are great too; dogs don’t mind if it’s mushy.

Apples (without seeds), bananas, pineapple, orange peels, and pears add sweetness, which dogs love. Our Fox Terrier didn’t do well with pineapple, but the Welsh terrier loves it.

Directions:

1. Throw everything into your pot.
2. Cook it at least two hours, but the longer the better.
   1. Two hours will fully cook the beans, rice, and meat, but as with any crock pot meal the longer it cooks the more even the flavors get, the more mushier it gets, and the more ‘dog food like’ texture it develops.
   2. We usually start a batch in the evening, and cook it all night, or in the morning and torture the dogs all day with the smell.
3. Add water constantly. It’s better to be too wet than too dry.
   1. Water is good for dogs anyway, and having it finish too wet will give it a consistency like canned food.
   2. If it’s too dry, it risks burning and smelling up your house.
4. Cool and Serve.

One word of warning: By the time ours has cooked overnight or all day, the dogs are really excited to have some. However, dogs are ‘gulpers’ so serving them hot food is dangerous. Let it rest on the counter until it’s cool to the touch, or your dog will have a horrible stomach ache and probably diarrhea to follow. It’s not the food, it’s the temperature.

 

Have fun with this, and don’t overthink it. Basically, anything goes, and as long as you avoid foods on the no-no list it’ll turn out just fine. Your dogs will love it!

Also, our Fox Terrier has itched constantly since we brought him home. Once we put him on this food, he hasn’t itched since.