A Pup Above Cooks Up World’s First Sous Vide Dog Food

Lori Ennis
by Lori Ennis
Recently two very lucky pups (ahem, mine!) got the opportunity to try some delicious vittles from A Pup Above, the first Sous Vide Dog Food that is available for retail purchase. Your pet’s going to love it so much, they won’t even know about how good it is for them!


With more and more coming out about the ingredients in our pet’s food being pivotal to their health and happiness, more pet parents are looking for quality ingredients that not only nourish their pets but make them happy too. Really, do you enjoy eating the same thing day after day? Our dogs are not much different!


I’ve been wanting to change our dogs’ food for a while now, as the dry kibble I’ve been feeding them was nutritiously sound for them but not super well-liked. I’d have to ‘dress’ their dry up with ‘sprinkles’ (some sort of wet food I’d mix in to trick them into eating their kibble) and to be truthful, that was just getting to be a pain.


Which is why I was beyond excited to give A Pup Above a try! Maybe you’ve heard of them—they’re a husband-and-wife-owned company out of Austin, Texas and they are a unique dog food company for so many reasons! Javier Marriott and his wife, Ruth, created A Pup Above, the first Sous-Vide Dog Food that is not only available for retail purchase, but that comes directly to your door! Yes, you can get fresh, healthy and delicious (just ask my dogs!) dog food delivered to your door with nary a thought but about how much more your pups will love you! Don’t believe me? Ask their Chief Office Pup and Taster, the beautiful Lola!

Sous Vide… Say Again?


First off, what is sous vide, you may ask?


Sous vide is a low-heat cooking process that lets the whole food ingredients retain all of the important nutrients. Foods are in vacuum-packed bags and cooked in water at a specific temperature ( A Pup Above uses 180 degrees to ensure there are no issues with Salmonella or Listeria contamination) for perfection every time. Additionally, all the nutrients of whole-food cooking remain.


Why is sous vide a great method of preparing dog food? Many of us would love to feed raw foods for the whole-food nutrition but are concerned about pathogens. Sous vide keeps the nutrition in but bacteria out. Plus, it honest-to-goodness smells and tastes delicious.


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The first flavor I tried with my dogs was Bitchin’ Beef Stew and when I opened up the package, they started to drool. The puppy literally started to jump up and down like a pogo stick (she’s food-motivated!) and they licked the bowls clean. Then they started scouring around to see if any had been left over! Because sous vide preserves the consistency of the food, I felt like I’d literally just served them fresh beef stew and they loved it! I was pretty impressed to see whole vegetables from a vacuum-packed bag!


SAVE 25% Off your Pup’s 1st Meal Delivery when you Subscribe with code HAPPINESS25

But Is It Really Fresh If It’s Frozen And What’s In It Anyway?


Yes. Undoubtedly it is! And if you have any doubts about the freshness before you cut open a package, they will disappear immediately when the aroma of the fresh food fills the kitchen. What I feed my dog is important and A Pup Above ingredients are human-grade, non-GMO, pesticide-free whole foods. Essentially the same things I try very hard to feed my human family members. When you consider your pets family, you want to feed them as well as you can and this was a dog food I felt like was the closest to raw I’d come to.


A Pup Above: Dog Years Delivered!


At Global Pet Expo, I met a Great Dane who was 17-years-old. That’s crazy old for a dog that size, and I asked his owner the secret. His answer? “Good food. Good food that you’d feed yourself.” He made me a believer and I’ve been looking for something ever since. I love fresh, wet food for them, but grocery shopping just for the dogs can be super costly and time-consuming.

That’s exactly what the company’s founders created A Pup Above for. They didn’t want chemicals, fillers and rendered meats in their dog’s food and neither do I. I know that dogs can often just survive on any old food, but A Pup Above believes that dogs should thrive too. They call that their “Dog Years Delivered” purpose and after meeting that Great Dane this year, I certainly hope that it does.


A Pup Above Plans To Meet Various Needs


A great feature of A Pup Above as compared to some other subscription plans is that there are a ton of ways you can build plans for your dog(s). If you become a member of A Pup Above, you’ll be able to customize your plan based on how many dogs you have as well as their sizes and dietary needs. And, you’ll be able to schedule regular deliveries that mean you’ll never have to tell Fido you forgot to buy dog food, with a 30% membership discount to boot. Plans automatically renew and you can cancel at any time without penalty.

But, if you’re just looking to try it out first, there are options to buy individual packages, or what I got—the sampler pack. They have feeding guides so you can make sure you’re giving just the right amount of wholesome deliciousness. Many like to go full throttle and transition over to A Pup Above as their pet’s full diet and that’s completely fine since it exceeds dog health requirements, while others like to supplement a high-quality kibble with A Pup Above yumminess and that’s a great option too. That’s probably what we’re going to do since we believe that dry kibble also helps keep their teeth in shape too.


The Verdict


I do love this dog food but more importantly, so do my dogs. The directions suggest you take the package out of the freezer a day before you plan to use it but I found to be able to serve without having to defrost, you’d be safer if you took it out a day-and-a-half or two days before. Because all the bags are vacuum packed, they’ll be fine, and even once opened, the food in the packages lasts seven days in the refrigerator. Some looking to transition it to their dog’s sole food may find it a bit pricier than other subscription or ‘fresh’ pet foods, but then again, no other dog food company uses sous vide to make their food available to us.


Our Sampler Pack was delivered in the winter, so you may wonder what it would be like to deliver on a warm summer day. They deliver with amazing insulation and dry ice and claim that the food stays fresh through midnight the day of your delivery so I don’t think that’ll be an issue. The names of the foods alone make you want to rip the box open; in addition to Bitchin’ Beef Stew, we enjoyed Porky’s Luau and Turkey Pawella.


Mostly, though, I love the convenience factor. I really do want to give my dogs the same thought and consideration that I put into my family’s food, but admit that sometimes that just doesn’t happen as I envision. That’s why A Pup Above is perfect for someone looking to give their dog a nutritious, delicious food that has the benefits of raw but safely cooked and delivered right to you.

Plus, there’s nothing better than watching your dogs enjoy their food so much they go nuts when they even see the bag. That’s a big win to me and this house is full of A Pup Above converts!


And we’ve secured a couple of amazing deals for our readers. When ordering on APupAbove.com, save 15% Off your 1st Sampler Pack Order with the code SAMPLEHAPPINESS and 25% Off your Pup’s 1st Meal Delivery when you Subscribe with code HAPPINESS25.

Lori Ennis
Lori Ennis

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