How to Make Homemade Dry Dog Food

Learn how to make dry dog food with this easy homemade dog dish

31 October 2023

If you’ve ever caught yourself watching MasterChef and thinking, ‘Hey, I bet I could do that’, now’s your time to shine. And if you’ve ever caught yourself watching MasterChef and thinking, ‘Whoa, I could never do that’ – well, now’s your time to prove yourself wrong. Henrietta Morrison, founder of UK-based pet food company Lily’s Kitchen, created a recipe that’ll leave you feeling like an accomplished cook regardless of your level of kitchen expertise. And the best part? It’s all for your dog’s benefit.

Henrietta started cooking for her dog Lily because of worsening skin allergies, and found cooking homemade food was a real game-changer. “When I first started to cook for Lily, it was really out of desperation. I had tried almost all pet foods on the market, and she would either refuse to eat them, or they just exacerbated her itchy skin.”

As a proponent of healthy and proper foods, Henrietta’s first recipes included oat flour, blueberries, squash and sweet potatoes. She found that her homemade meals radically improved her pup’s itchy, irritated skin. “I was delighted but also furious. I could not believe that I had been feeding her ready-made pet food that was actually making her itchiness worse rather than providing her with the nutrition she needed,” she says.

In addition to removing allergens, homemade dog food can benefit your dog’s health and well-being by ensuring fresh, high-quality, easily digestible ingredients. “In an ideal situation, you would always use locally grown ingredients. What is critical is to always ensure you are sourcing the best quality you can,” says Henrietta.

There are a lot of misconceptions surrounding dog nutrition. For many pet parents, it can be difficult to decipher what the information means on pet food labels and how it impacts their dogs. What you feed your pup has a huge impact on their health, because their gut microbiomes rule their body. Whether you make your dog’s food every day or not, feeding your pup homemade dog food gives you a way to shake things up with them healthy bites – they enjoy variety as much as we do.

Henrietta collaborated with several holistic and conventional veterinarians to formulate her recipes while developing her cookbook, Dinner for Dogs. This easy homemade dog kibble dish combines turkey, lentils, carrots and other healthy veggies, rosemary and more delicious ingredients.

Homemade Dog Kibble

Create crunchy dog kibble at home that your dog will love. With wholesome ingredients and complete control, you can make this a healthy balanced diet with delicious nutritional toppers. You can also experiment by cooking this with a dehydrator, low and slow, for even better results.

INGREDIENTS

200g brown rice
100g lentils
1¼ litres water
3 medium-sized carrots (200g), peeled and chopped
1 medium-sized sweet potato (200g), scrubbed and chopped
1 apple, peeled, cored and chopped, or 100g unsweetened applesauce
100g steel-cut oats
1¼ tbsp finely chopped fresh parsley
2 small sprigs of fresh rosemary, finely chopped
500g minced turkey
50ml olive or sunflower oil, plus additional oil for greasing

DIRECTIONS

Add rice and lentils to a saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium and cook for 20 minutes.
Add the chopped carrots, sweet potato, apple, oats and chopped herbs to the saucepan once the rice and lentils are cooked and gently simmer for 20 minutes more. If the mixture is too dry, add an extra cup of water.
Preheat the oven to 80C and grease two parchment paper-lined baking trays.
Meanwhile, brown the turkey mince in a separate pan for about 10 minutes (or until cooked through), depending on your heat setting. Stir continuously while cooking to prevent it from sticking to the pan as turkey is very low in fat.
Next, put half the cooked vegetable and grain blend into a food processor with half the cooked turkey, add half the oil and pulse until the batter resembles a thick purée.
Spread the batter on to one of the sheets so that it is about 5mm thick. The batter will spread slightly as it cooks, so leave some room for this around the edges.
Repeat steps five and six with the second baking tray and the remaining batter.
Place both cookie sheets into the preheated oven and bake for 45 minutes.
Turn the dog kibble over to dry through and cook for another 30–45 minutes. You should have what looks like two large cookies. If the ‘cookies’ are not thoroughly dried out, leave them in the oven for up to 20 minutes more.
Reduce the oven temperature to 160C. Remove from the oven, cool slightly and cut them into small pieces. Place the chunks back onto the cookie sheets and bake for an additional hour or until the kibble is fully dried (but not burnt).
Remove the kibble from the oven and let cool completely. The finished dog kibble should resemble pieces of broken pita bread and will keep in the fridge for 10 days.

Nutritional Information

Per 100g:
Calories: 365
Protein: 20 percent
Fat: 9 percent

Adapted from Dinner for Dogs by Henrietta Morrison, The Experiment Publishing, 2013.

Note: while caution was taken to give safe recommendations and accurate instructions in this article, it is impossible to predict an individual dog’s reaction to any food or ingredient. Readers should consult their vets and use personal judgement when applying this information to their own dogs’ diets.