Complete and Balanced: A Turkey Dog Food Recipe to Share with Your Best Friend

Cooking for your dog or preparing raw meals is rewarding, and you know it’s best for their health. Most people’s concern when meal prepping for their dog is whether or not it’s complete and balanced. Especially if you seek balance with every meal! Here’s a complete and balanced turkey dog food recipe to share with your Best Friend!

This recipe eases up some of the work for you! I’ve gone ahead and used BalanceIT.com’s database to come up with a complete and balanced recipe that does not require BalanceIT supplementation. While BalanceIT isn’t my favorite, it is a good resource to get started. You will learn it is not that difficult to make some amazing REAL FOOD meals for your dog. Additionally, I have chosen ingredients that are easily sourced from your grocery and health food stores.

This recipe is for a 50 pound dog. Assuming that your dog eats twice a day, it will last 8 days. If you wish to make more, have a larger or smaller dog, feel free to reach out to me for help with conversions. Also of note, a food scale is a marvelous and necessary resource when cooking for your dog.

INGREDIENTS

Turkey Breast: Provides solid lean protein to balance out the ground turkey. High in essential amino acids (stuff that makes up much-needed protein), vitamin B6 and selenium.

Ground Turkey: High quality, inexpensive protein to add to your Best Friend’s diet. Full of essential amino acids, iron, zinc, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, and selenium.

Sardines: Another inexpensive, high quality protein. Full of omega 3s, vitamins D and B12, more essential amino acids, and coenzyme Q10. Choose sardines in water, or if you can find them, salt-free sardines in water. If you cannot find the salt-free variety, you can rinse the salt while still in the can.

Beef Liver: More amino acids, vitamins A, iron, copper, phosphorus, B vitamins, and essential fatty acids. If you have recently adopted a malnourished pup, find a way to get some beef liver into her diet to bring her back to thriving health!

Sweet Potato: Full of healthy fiber, as well as vitamins A, C, B, iron, potassium, calcium, and selenium.

Organic Brown Rice: More healthy fiber, carbohydrates, and vitamins B and D. Choose organic to avoid glysophate and other chemicals.

Walnut Oil: This stuff is full of linoleic acid and alpha-linoleic acid. Both are essential fatty acids in a dog’s diet.

Broccoli: A dog super-food! Broccoli is full of vitamins A, C, E, K, and B. It is also a great source of iron, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and selenium.

Spinach: Full of vitamins A, B, C, and K. Also packed with antioxidants, beta-carotine and fiber.

Blueberries: Blueberries are yet another dog superfood! Full of fiber, vitamin C, and powerfully protective antioxidants.

Canned Pumpkin Puree: More important fiber, vitamins A and C, potassium. Pumpkin puree is also a quality prebiotic for our Best Friends, meaning it feeds healthy gut bacteria which supports a healthy immune system.

Supplementation

Without the BalanceIT supplement, this diet is short on vitamin E, iodine, calcium, and zinc. Don’t worry! I have you covered. You will need to add a vitamin E, calcium, and kelp supplement, which are not hard to come by. Most homemade dog foods are deficient in calcium. For this reason, veterinarians do not recommend them. However, it’s easy to add in necessary calcium.

Be sure to use human quality supplements, especially for the bone meal. Bone meals for gardening are not safe for human or canine consumption. I have linked brands of supplements that I use in my dog food below. These can be found at grocery and health food stores.

ADD THESE, ALONG WITH THE WALNUT OIL AT EACH MEAL.

Vitamin E: I love adding these Hemp Seeds to my dog’s meal. 1 teaspoon per meal. They are rich in vitamin e. Plus, you’re not relying on a supplement or vitamin.

Kelp: (provides iodine) 1/4-1 tsp per day. I like this dog-specific supplement

Calcium: Now Bone Meal add 1 tsp per meal

Zinc: Canned Oysters. Add 1-2 oysters from the can directly to the meal. If your dog is picky, chop them up before feeding. 1 can should last for the whole batch of food. Oysters also contain some iodine.

Of course, you can always omit these additional items and just add the BalanceIT supplement to each meal.

For every meal, you will need to add 2 3/4 tsp of the BalanceIT powder.

Dog Food Recipe

Remember, this makes a little over a week’s worth of meals for a 35 pound dog. You can adjust the recipe or portions as needed. Also, keep in mind for an accurate recipe, you will weigh each ingredient after cooking, but before mixing together, as a rule you can add about 25% of the amount before cooking. Finally, oils and vitamins are added in at mealtimes to prevent them from going rancid.

Meals can be individually portioned and frozen. I freeze each day’s meals and take out the next day’s meal in the morning after feeding breakfast. Your dog will love the foods and her health will be better for incorporating real, nutrient dense foods into the rotation.

• Roasted Turkey Breast: 24 oz
• Ground Turkey; 85% fat, 15% lean: 15 oz (you can go ahead and cook the whole pound to account for some moisture loss)
• Sardines in water: 17 oz (about 5 3.75oz cans)
• Beef Liver: 19 oz
• Sweet Potato: 5 cups (3-4 large sweet potatoes)
• Brown Rice: 4 cups; cooked (about 2.5 cups dry rice)
• Walnut Oil: 2 1/8 teaspoons (at EACH meal) add with each meal to prevent the fats from going rancid
• Broccoli: 2 cups cooked
• Spinach: 2 cups cooked
• Blueberries: 1 cup (fresh or frozen)
• Pumpkin Puree (not pie filling): 1 Cup

Directions

1. Begin by cooking your rice and roasting the sweet potatoes. Pierce the sweet potatoes with a fork and cook in a pre-heated oven at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes. Rice can cook on the stove top according to instructions.

2. You can also cook the liver in boiling water on the stove top to cut down on liver-stink. Boil liver for 20 minutes on low until just cooked through.

3. While cooking those things, prep your turkey breast for cooking. Cut up or puree in a food processor (I use my Ninja dog food blender) while the meat is raw.

4. Next, brown the turkey breast in a pan (no oil!). Remove it from the pan, set aside, and add your spinach and ground turkey. These can be cooked together.

5. While these are cooking, you can boil the broccoli with the liver. Broccoli will need to be chopped and can be added to the liver for the last 3 minutes of cooking. After cooking, drain, and add both the broccoli and liver to your food processor and puree or chop into small pieces to increase bioavailability. Remember, it’s for your dog and she’ll love it! Don’t worry if the liver/broccoli puree is icky!

6. For the blueberries, I recommend pureeing or mashing them up with a fork. This makes them easier to digest and more bioavailable.

Mix It UP!

To mix, you will need a large mixing bowl and your hand (maybe even a plastic glove).

By now, you’ll have;

• Cooked ground turkey with spinach, turkey breast
• Liver/Broccoli puree
• Pureed blueberries
• Cooked Rice
• Baked Sweet Potatoes
• Open, drained cans of sardines
• Canned Pumpkin

Use a large mixing bowl. Put your cooked sweet potatoes in first and mash them with a potato masher or your hands. Then add all other ingredients (except oils and supplements, which will be added at mealtime to preserve their integrity). Mix with your hands or a large spoon.

Remember, you can portion these out into daily containers, feed as full meals or toppers. If feeding as toppers, you can omit walnut oil and supplements. Just remember to keep toppers to no more than 25% of your dog’s daily meals.

Nutrition Information

Calories: 953 calories (per day)

Protein: 35% (331 calories)

Fat: 40% (380 calories)

Carbohydrate: 25% (242 calories)

Moisture: 69.7%

Higher dietary protein and fat may not be tolerated by some dogs. Higher concentrations of either start at 35%. Please note, this recipe has higher concentrations of both. You know your dog. If concerned, don’t hesitate to speak to your veterinarian.

Feeding Instructions

Replace the amount of kibble your dog would eat with this fresh option. If feeding as a topper, replace no more than 25% of the meal with this recipe.

Meals can be portioned and stored in the fridge for up to 3 days. Also, you can store portions in the freezer for up to 3 weeks. Any longer in the freezer degrades the vitamin and amino acids in the ingredients and the food loses its healthful benefits.

Remember, this meal is part of a balanced diet for your Best Friend. While many of us are programmed to feed the same foods day in and day out, a balanced diet rotates different proteins, vegetables and organ meats. With a diet like this that does require supplementation, it’s healthiest to rotate through other recipes so you are not reliant on supplements to fill the gaps.

I recommend feeding this meal for a week, then switching to a different recipe. Personally, I choose 2 different proteins for the week and make both recipes. The dogs get a different protein each day. Additionally, this rotation through different proteins helps cut down on food allergies that are becoming so common in our Best Friends.

While it’s not easy making complete, balanced meals for your Best Friend, it’s a simple and rewarding process. If you have the time and resources, I highly recommend making your dog’s meals. Your Best Friend will thank you!

Try it out! Let me know what you think!