Home / Recipes / Beef and Pea Meatballs
Lean beef and green peas in a small baked meatball, bound with quinoa and egg. The beef meatball for owners who already have peas in the freezer.
The beef meatball already in this library fills its mixture with carrot and cauliflower. This one takes the other classic route: peas, lightly mashed so they hold in the mix, with cooked quinoa as the binder and an egg to set it. Same protein, completely different filling, texture and weeknight logic: this is the batch to make when the freezer holds a bag of peas and nothing else green.
Meatballs earn their keep as the flexible format in a dog kitchen. Served whole, one is a serious reward or a meal topper for a large dog; halved or crumbled, the same batch becomes a training supply or a scatter across two meals. Everything in the bowl holds a verdict in our can dogs eat guides, the beef is cooked through with a thermometer check on the largest ball, and the batch freezes in the flat, separate way that makes weekday use easy.
Storage: Refrigerate in an airtight container within 2 hours of baking and use within 3 to 4 days, or freeze for up to 2 months.
Every ingredient in this recipe was checked against our own food safety verdicts before it went in. If a food has no verdict page on this site, it does not go into a recipe here, however common it is in other people's treat recipes. The checks for this one:
Grind choice decides the texture. A very lean grind bakes drier, and the mashed peas are the moisture plan built into the recipe, so do not drain pea liquid obsessively; a spoonful of it in the mix is welcome. Roll the balls firmly: a loosely packed meatball sheds its peas in the oven and comes out as beef with green rubble. If the mixture feels wet, rest it ten minutes in the fridge, where the quinoa drinks and the fat firms, rather than adding anything dry that holds no verdict.
A meatball is a meal scale treat, so servings are counted in balls and halves. Crumbled over food, one meatball tops two meals for a medium dog; served whole, it is the day's headline treat and should be counted as one.
| Dog size | Suggested serving |
|---|---|
| Toy, under 10 lb | Half a small meatball, crumbled |
| Small, 10 to 25 lb | 1 small meatball, or half a medium one |
| Medium, 25 to 50 lb | 1 medium meatball a day |
| Large, 50 to 90 lb | 1 to 2 meatballs a day |
| Extra large, over 90 lb | Up to 2 meatballs a day, within the day's treat total |
Treats are treats. The American Kennel Club's guidance is that treats should make up no more than 10 percent of a dog's daily calories, counting every treat and snack in the day together, and that the treat calories sit inside the day's total rather than on top of it. The servings above are starting points for a healthy adult dog; puppies, seniors and dogs on a veterinary diet need their own veterinarian's steer, and a dog trying any ingredient for the first time should get a small piece first, with a day to watch for an upset stomach.
Cooked beef follows the FoodSafety.gov cold food storage chart's rules for cooked dishes: refrigerate within 2 hours of baking, keep at 40F (4C) or below, use within 3 to 4 days, and freeze at 0F (minus 18C) for up to 2 months of best quality in a small homemade batch, inside the chart's wider freezer window. Freeze the cooled meatballs on the tray before bagging so they stay separate, thaw a day's supply in the fridge, and serve thawed meatballs the same day. Anything that smells sour or feels slimy is finished, whatever the calendar says.
The earlier beef meatballs fill the mixture with carrot and cauliflower and no grain binder. This batch fills with peas and binds with quinoa, giving a softer, greener meatball with a different texture and a different shopping list. Both were checked ingredient by ingredient; they are cousins, not repeats, and most kitchens will prefer one filling over the other.
No. Our beef verdict is for thoroughly cooked beef, never raw, and that applies to the center of a meatball as much as to a steak. Bake until the largest ball shows no pink in the middle. A dog gains nothing from a rare center and the household loses the safety the verdict rests on.
At this scale, yes. Our peas verdict notes the research discussion around peas as a major ingredient in some diets, which is exactly why peas here are a filling measured in fractions of a cup across a whole batch, never the protein or the point. A dog whose veterinarian manages its diet should have any new regular treat cleared first.
Both hold their own yes verdicts in our library and both make fine meatballs; this library already publishes a pork meatball and a chicken meatball with their own checks. Keep the pea and quinoa amounts identical, and for chicken bake to the poultry standard, cooked through to 165F at the center.
Thaw in the refrigerator, never on the counter, and serve the same day. The 3 to 4 day fridge window in the storage section counts from baking day, not from thawing day, so a meatball thawed on day three has that day, not a fresh four.
This page is general information drawn from the published guidance of the organizations listed under Sources below. It is not veterinary advice, and it does not replace your own veterinarian, who knows your dog. If your dog has eaten something toxic, contact your veterinarian, the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center on (888) 426-4435, or the Pet Poison Helpline on (855) 764-7661 straight away. A consultation fee may apply on the helplines.
Last updated: November 2026. Every ingredient in this recipe was checked against the verdict pages linked above. Storage times follow the FoodSafety.gov cold storage guidance listed under Sources. How we work: our methodology.
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