Basics of Home Cooking for Dogs
Here is a summary of the ideas I've used in feeding my dogs. I'll begin with the basic recipe I started with. It makes enough food for one of each of two daily meals for my Boxers.

2 cups cooked grain

2/3 cup meat

1/4 cup chopped or grated vegetables

Here's some further information on ingredients.

Meat:

Nearly any muscle tissue meat is fine. Dogs are crazy about organs like hearts and gizzards, but too much liver is not good. An animal's liver tends to store concentrated pollutants.

I buy frozen ground turkey for my dogs. The price ranges from 60 to 80 cents a pound. When the price is low, I buy 8 or 10 cases and store it in my big freezer in the basement. I'd buy fresh ground turkey if it were available, but, at least in this area, it isn't. Now and then I buy a package of chicken innards as a treat. If you eat meat, leftovers and table scraps are fine.

A couple of times a week, I give my Boxers a can of mackerel instead of turkey.

Grains:

Bread, rice, wheat, oatmeal, barley, etc., are good choices. Corn is more difficult for dogs to digest, in spite of the fact that large quantities of it are found in commercial foods, especially the cheaper ones. On average, 3 large slices of bread equal 1 cup of cooked grain. I use a combination of cooked oatmeal and whole grain bread. Day old bread keeps the price down, and the dogs think it's just fine. Leftover pasta works well too.

Vegetables:

Anything but onions will do. I've read that large amounts of onions appear to cause a type of anemia in dogs. I'm not sure how much is necessary to cause trouble, but I'd rather not take chances.

Supplements:

I use Belfield's vitamin mineral supplementation program. It's outlined in detail on the supplements page.

Preparation:

My original method was to make a big pot of rice a couple of times a week and store it in plastic tubs in the refrigerator. I thawed four pounds of ground meat and a pound or two of vegetables at a time and stored them the same way. I used a pair of 2 cup Pyrex measuring cups as my main cooking utensils. Zapping the meat for two dogs takes just under 4 minutes in the microwave. It's done on the outside and red on the inside when it comes out, but stirring it immediately quickly browns all of it. Then I'd warm up the vegetables and rice and cool off the meat at the same time by mixing them all together along with the bread and supplements.

These days, I use an entirely different method. It's explained in detail on the page titled Dale's Recipe.