Instapot Dog Food Recipe for the Pampered Pooch
First things first, because there are a lot of experts that come out of the woodwork on the Internet, I am NOT an expert in animal nutrition. I’m an herbalist who did some research on feeding my dog a balanced diet each day. So let’s start with a little history on my dog. She’s the beautiful 4 year-old English Springer Spaniel pictured above and has always had an excellent diet. At 6 weeks old, when I brought her home, I instantly transitioned her from what her breeder fed to a raw natural diet. It was quite expensive at about $275 bucks a month for Darwin’s Natural Selections with a variety flavors and treats. I deemed this ancestral diet to be best for her since she’s a field bred, working dog. I knew she was going to be spending time out in the fields either working or hunting under my hawks and falcons (I’m a falconer so in that role she can work in partnership with the raptors). I need her to be strong and athletic. That ancestral diet formed the basis of what you see today. However, it wasn’t without problems. Beau, short for Sonoran Desert Beauty, has a bit of a sensitive stomach and the meat supply has some issues these days. While on Darwin’s I received several notices of E. Coli and Salmonella contamination in their food lots. It wasn’t long before Beau ended up with an infection. That’s when I decided for her health and well being to transition from raw to cooked.
Ingredients:
Chicken Thighs (2 large packs)
Chicken Breasts (2 large packs)
Organic Sweet Potatoes (4 – 5 lbs)
Baby Spinach (32 oz)
Fresh String Beans (2 lbs)
Kidney Beans (1.5 lbs)
Frozen Corn 16 oz (3)
Himalayan pink salt
Coconut oil or Butter
Brown Basmati Rice (you’ll buy this as needed)
Pre-preparation is done the day before cooking to make this easy! It typically takes all day with at least 5 Instapot loads when I’m cooking this volume of food. However, the recipe above yielded 54 days frozen and about 7 days refrigerated.
Pre-prep is peeling the potatoes and snapping the peas. I have a Food Cycler which I highly recommend for a zero-waste household. I take all of my potato peels combined with tea bags, lemon rinds, and old leftovers I might have and into the food-cyler it goes to make compost for my garden (pictu
Preparation:
There’s really no set way to do this. I start throwing combinations in the Instapot! I don’t add broth, I allow the chicken to make its own broth so I add the chicken to the bottom of the Instapot, sprinkle it with some Himalayan pink salt. Add 4 cups of water to cover the chicken and about 2 tablespoons of butter or a tablespoon of coconut oil. Add a layer of potato, some spinach and corn and cook on pressure cook for 45 minutes.
NOTE: I don’t add the rice to the Instapot mixture. You can do that but it significantly increases the volume. I cook 2 cups of rice every few days with a tablespoon of avocado oil and keep that in a container in the refrigerator. At feeding time I heat up a bowl of rice and a cup of the chicken mixture and blend that together. Takes less than 5 minutes.
Between Instapot loads, I tend to store my food in a large bowl. By the end of the day I have a few of these. This is a lot of food! Finally, you’ll have your storage containers ready to go and I tend to leave a week worth of food out that she eats fresh. Beau gets 4 meals from each of these frozen containers.
Finally, I serve the chicken/potato mixture over a nice fluffy bowl of rice! Beau doesn’t like her food very warm so i heat her rice for 30 – 45 seconds and the chicken for another 45 seconds. It’s warm that way.
After a nice 360 degree rotation through the air Beau gets to it! Hope your dog enjoys as well.
**Beau takes a daily multivitamin with Tumeric and probiotic.
She also takes cranberry chewables daily for urinary health.
