Making whole, nutritious, nutrient dense food for you and you dog doesn't have to be as hard as one might think. One amazingly simple recipe that you can alter over time is bone broth. The beauty of making bone broth is that you can use the ends of the vegetables, that you would normally compost or throw away. The ends of vegetables might not look great or be something you want to chew on but there is still nutrients in it that can be extracted out and consumed by both you and your pup.
How I like to go about making bone broth for myself and my boy
- Save the end pieces of vegetables that are safe for both me and my dog in a bag or container in the freezer.
- When eating chicken, save the bones in a similar fashion. To get a decent amount of bones at once, roast a whole chicken. If roasted with root vegetables, I save the ends of all the used vegetables too!
- When I've accumulated enough ingredients over time, (they're all scrapes you'd usually throw away!) I throw them in a crock pot, fill the water up to the top, add a splash of vinegar to help extract the proteins from the bones and place the cover on.
- Set the crock pot to low for a couple hours and then switch it to warm. Let it sit for 24-48 hours. Adding more water may be necessary throughout so keeping an eye on it every so often can be helpful.
- The house will start to smell amazing and you know the broth is getting potent!
- When the broth is done cooking, turn off the crock pot and let sit for an hour to cool down before straining.
- Strain out the bones and vegetable pieces.
- Tada! Bone Broth!
This is the most basic and simple way to make bone broth. All ingredients you use could be scrapes from other meals which saves you money. We all love that!
You can always get creative and add different herbs and roots to add more medicinal properties and nutrients. Just make sure everything you use is safe for your dog too if you plan on sharing this nourishing treat.
Some ideas of other ingredients you can add:
Dried medicinal mushrooms
Burdock root
Dandelion root
Seaweeds
Turmeric
Ginger
It's always a good idea to have a printed copy of safe and dangerous foods for dogs. Some foods that can easily be thrown into broth if you're not aware of their dangers to dogs are onions, onion skins and garlic.
Benefits of Bone Broth:
Packed with vitamins and minerals
Immune boosting
Digestive repair and regulation
Provides collagen to help support and repair joint tissue
May help fight osteoarthritis
Reduces inflammation throughout the body including the joints and digestive tract
Helps create a better sleep cycle when consumed in the evening
Can support weight loss
As you can see, bone broth can be beneficial for humans and dogs! If you make it with all dog safe ingredients then you can share this nutrient dense snack with your four legged friends
Ways to consume bone broth:
Make a soup with the broth base
Use the broth instead of water when cooking rice
Simmer vegetables in the broth when sautéing your next meal
Pour the broth into ice cube trays and pop them out at a later date to simmer vegetables or put in with rice
And for your dog!
Use any type of mold to freeze the broth into cubes and feed them to your dog as is
Put the broth cubes in their food dish as an added treat at meal time
Mix in other nutrient dense ingredients before freezing to make a power pack of a treat! Some options are; Chia seeds, flax seeds, coconut oil, blueberries, spinach, spirulina or other herbs and spices.
Pour some broth directly onto your dogs food dish to make it a little soup!
There's so many options that you can experiment with and alter the recipes with over time to save money and try different varieties of the same base recipe depending on what you have.
