Prepare by: blanching, steaming, pureeing, or fermenting. Slice carrots before cooking them or feeding them to your dog.
Prepare by: blanching, steaming, pureeing, or fermenting. Cook green beans whole—there’s no need to chop or slice them first!
Prepare by: blanching, steaming, pureeing, or fermenting. Chop broccoli into manageable florets before cooking it for your dog.
Prepare by: blanching, steaming, pureeing, or fermenting. [4] X Research source Slice beets into manageable pieces before cooking them. As tough root vegetables, they’re difficult for dogs to eat whole.
Prepare by: blanching, pureeing, or fermenting. Chop up celery before blanching or fermenting it.
Prepare by: pureeing or fermenting. Slice up your cucumbers before giving your dog a taste. Whole cucumbers can be a choking hazard for the pup.
Prepare by: blanching, steaming, or pureeing. Dice sweet potatoes into bite-sized 1 inch (2. 5 cm) cubes before you cook them. Don’t feed your dog raw sweet potato, as it’s harder to digest and may cause intestinal blockage.
Prepare by: blanching, steaming, pureeing, or baking. Dice butternut squash into bite-sized 1 inch (2. 5 cm) cubes before you cook them.
Prepare by: baking. Remove the seeds before baking, then cut up the baked pumpkin before serving it to your pet.
Prepare by: blanching, steaming, pureeing, or fermenting. Chop up Brussels sprouts before cooking them. Cut each head into halves or quarters to keep them bite-sized for your dog.
Prepare by: steaming. In large amounts, spinach can be difficult to digest and eventually cause kidney damage. So long as you carefully regulate the amount of spinach your dog eats, there’s no reason to worry.
When you cook vegetables, don’t use any butter, oils, cooking fats, seasoning, or salt—they’re all unhealthy for dogs as well.
Cook diced or sliced carrots for 2 minutes. Cook broccoli florets, small head Brussels sprouts, celery, and green beans for 3 minutes. Cook beets, butternut squash, large head Brussels sprouts, and sweet potatoes for 5 minutes.
Be sure to stay close by and stir the vegetables several times while they cool.
Move frozen veggies into the refrigerator when you need to thaw them; they’ll naturally defrost after several hours. For quick thawing, microwave the vegetables on the “defrost” setting until they’re ready to eat.
You can also purchase an electric steamer, which is effective at preparing larger batches of vegetables all at once.
Steam broccoli, green beans, and spinach for 5 minutes. Keep sliced carrots in the steamer for 6 minutes. Steam Brussels sprouts for 8 minutes.
Be aware that while boiling is easy and softens veggies effectively, it’s not ideal because it removes nearly half of the available nutrients from the vegetables.
Broccoli, spinach, Brussels sprouts, cucumber, celery, and green beans can all be pureed raw. [21] X Research source
Use spinach and broccoli in moderation since too much of them can cause your dog discomfort. Add a small amount of either veggie and use another vegetable to make up most of the puree.
Keep in mind that large, Halloween-sized pumpkins aren’t ideal for cooking! Instead, get smaller “pie pumpkins” or “sugar pumpkins. " [27] X Research source The process for baking a pumpkin and butternut squash is essentially the same. After all, a pumpkin is just another variety of squash.
The best vegetables to ferment for your dog are carrots, beets, cucumbers, green beans, and celery.
The salt will create a brine once the vegetables are mixed with water, allowing them to fully ferment over time.
The sandwich bag of water weighs down your veggies and cuts off oxygen, which is essential to fermenting them successfully. Filtered water is best for fermentation because unfiltered water can contain excess minerals and chemicals like chloramine, which affect the taste and quality of fermented foods. After adding all ingredients, screw on the mason jar’s lid loosely. That way, oxygen can’t get into the jar, but carbon dioxide can still escape.
There’s no set time for fermentation to take full effect. Keep taste-testing the vegetables over time until they reach the level of fermentation that you’re looking for.
