The Honest Kitchen Bone Broth Honest Review: What We Like and What We Would Change

Biscuit is a Beagle mix, eight years old last April, twenty-seven pounds, and for a stretch last fall she treated her dinner bowl like it had personally insulted her. She would take two bites, push the kibble to the rim with her nose, look up at me, and walk off to the couch. I stood in my kitchen in Temple, Texas, and did the thing I always do when something is off. I got out a notepad and wrote down exactly what went into that bowl.

That is how a retired school cafeteria cook ends up reading pet food labels for fun. I read district food spec sheets for twenty-six years, and I still read every bag and canister in the pet aisle before it goes into my cart. Nobody sent me this product. I bought The Honest Kitchen Instant Beef Bone Broth with turmeric with my own money in December 2025, I asked Dr. Patel about it before I opened it, and I have used it most evenings since. This is the honest version: what I like, what I would change, and the parts that took me a couple of months to notice.

Here is the short version for anybody who wants it before the long one. The Honest Kitchen makes a powder here, not a liquid. It mixes into warm water and goes over dinner. Biscuit cleans her bowl now, and I cannot prove the broth is the reason, because four other things live on her shelf. It is easy to keep up with and it is not free of fuss. Four stars from me, and the two things I would change are the lid and the way it clumps when the water is not warm enough.

How I Started Using It

Before the powder, I made my own. I simmered plain unsalted chicken stock for Biscuit three or four times, no onion and no garlic, and I want to be honest about why I stopped. It was never the simmering that got me. It was the whole afternoon around it: the pot taking up the big burner, the straining through a colander into a second pot, the cooling, the portioning into small containers, and the freezer slowly filling with bags I had to label and date because Dale will thaw the wrong one. It took an afternoon and I am sixty-one and I have other things to do on a Sunday. The stock was fine. The time was not.

The routine now is small. I keep a glass two-cup measuring cup by the sink, I run the tap until the water feels bath-warm on my wrist, and I whisk in the amount the label gives for her weight. I pour it over her kibble at the five-thirty meal. That is the whole job, maybe ninety seconds, and I do it at the sink while the pot is on for our supper.

That glass cup matters more than it sounds. I started out mixing in a coffee mug because it was already sitting on the counter, and a mug is too narrow to whisk in, so I ended up with powder packed at the bottom and water floating on top and a fork that did nothing. The measuring cup has a spout, which means I can pour over the bowl without dribbling half of it down the side and onto the mat. Small thing. It is the difference between a routine I keep and a routine I quit.

I have never fed it to her as a drink on its own. The listing talks about it as a hydration topper, a treat and an enrichment thing, and I am sure people do all of that. I pour it on dinner. That is the routine that survived eleven months in this house, and I have learned the hard way that the routine that survives is the only routine that counts.

What the Label Says, and What It Does Not

The Honest Kitchen canister is 3.6 ounces and the label says it makes over 2 quarts, about 64 ounces of broth. It is a powder, beef flavor, and the ingredients listed are real beef bone broth with turmeric and pumpkin. It is labeled human grade and grain-free, and it says no corn, wheat, soy or meat meals, no GMO ingredients and no artificial preservatives. Those are the claims as printed. I can read them and I can repeat them. I cannot walk into the plant and check them.

The Amazon listing is another matter. It leans on words like digestive support and joint support, and that is where I put my pen down. I am not a veterinarian, a vet tech or a canine nutritionist, and I have no business telling you a powder supports your dog's joints. What I can tell you is what the label lists and what I saw in my own dog, and I will keep it to that.

There is one more thing a careful reader will notice. Turmeric is the reason I hesitated. The marketing around turmeric in pet food has gotten loud, and loud is usually a sign that the ingredient is doing less work than the paragraph around it suggests. Here it is one item on a short list, not the entire sales pitch, and I appreciated that. I still cannot tell you what the amount per serving adds up to, because the label does not spell it out in a way I can put a number on.

Biscuit hears the whisk and comes out of the other room. That is not a study. It is a Beagle in a kitchen, and it is what I have.

The Parts Nobody Warns You About

The clumping is real. If the water is even a little cool, the powder sits on top in dry islands and you end up chasing them around the cup with the whisk. Warm water and it disappears in a few seconds. It took me about a week to stop guessing and start running the tap until it felt bath-warm on my wrist. The worst morning was a Sunday in January when I was in a hurry to get out the door for church and used water straight from the cold tap. I stood there mashing at the cup with a spoon while Biscuit sat down behind me and sighed.

The lid is fiddly. It is a wide canister and the lid seats down over the rim, and on a bad morning I have stood there pressing at it with the heel of my hand like I am closing a paint can. My hands are not what they were, and I would like a lid that clicks. That is a small complaint and I know it, but I also know I am not the only person in this house with sixty-one-year-old hands.

And powder means dishes. A measuring cup, a whisk, a spoon. Every evening. If you are the kind of person who wants to open a can and pour, this is one more step than that. I do not mind it, because I am already standing at the sink, but I watched Dale try to do it once with a fork and it did not go well.

One canister does not last forever. It makes about 64 ounces of broth, and depending on how much your dog gets, that is somewhere between a couple of weeks and a couple of months. Mine lives on Biscuit's shelf in the pantry beside the salmon oil and the chews, and it takes up less room than a cereal box. I have reordered it several times and I have forgotten to reorder it twice, and both times I heard about it from Biscuit before I heard about it from myself. It keeps fine on the shelf with the lid seated, and I have never had it cake up in the canister the way brown sugar does.

What Actually Changed With Biscuit

She waits by the counter. That started in the first week and it has not stopped. When she hears the whisk against the cup she comes out of the other room, and she has a particular sit she does, with her front feet together and her nose up, and it is the least scientific data point in this whole review and also the one I trust the most.

She cleans the bowl. That is the change I was actually after. She still gets her same chicken-and-rice kibble, measured with the one metal scoop, twice a day, and I take a little kibble out to make room for what goes on top. Softened and warm, dinner goes down in one go now instead of two visits and a walk away.

Her weight went from thirty pounds at the September 2025 checkup to twenty-seven by June 2026, and I want to be careful here, because I could easily take credit in the wrong place. What changed was measuring the kibble with the scoop instead of eyeballing it, cutting back the extra treats, and pulling a little kibble out to make room for the topper. Dr. Patel was the one who suggested watching the treats in the first place. I am not handing that to a canister of powder.

The other four things on Biscuit's shelf came along at different times, and I cannot untangle them. I put all five labels in front of Dr. Patel in June and she was fine with the routine at the amounts on the labels for Biscuit's weight. Beyond that I have no idea what did what, and anybody who tells you they can separate five overlapping products in one dog is selling something.

Compared With What I Was Doing Before

Against plain kibble, there is no contest in this house, and I do not think that is a fair contest. Plain kibble was the thing she was walking away from. Warm liquid on top changes the smell of the bowl, and a Beagle's nose makes her decisions. If your dog eats plain kibble happily, you do not need to fix a thing.

Against my homemade stock, the powder wins on time and loses on control. I knew exactly what was in my pot because I put it there. With the canister I am trusting a label, and I read that label closely, but trusting is different from knowing. What I got back was an afternoon every couple of weeks, and I decided that was worth it.

I have not bought another broth brand, so I cannot compare from experience, and I will not pretend otherwise. I have stood in the aisle and read three or four of them. The powder ones all ask you to mix. The liquid ones take up more room on a shelf. I picked The Honest Kitchen because the ingredient list was short and the canister fits next to the oil on Biscuit's shelf. That is the whole of my decision process and I will not dress it up as more.

Against the other things on the shelf, the broth is the only one that goes on dinner and the only one that is warm. The salmon oil goes on breakfast, the probiotic chew comes after breakfast like a treat, the multivitamin after dinner, and the Meal Mixers go on both meals when I have them in the pantry. Five jobs, five slots, nothing doubled up, which is the only reason I have been able to keep it straight.

Who This Is For

This suits an owner with a dog who has gone off the bowl the way Biscuit did, who wants one small warm step at dinner and will actually do it. It suits someone who reads a label and is comfortable trusting a printed claim after reading it carefully. It suits a house like mine, where the pantry has a shelf with the dog's things on it and dinner happens at the same time every night. If you already keep a routine and just want something warm to pour, The Honest Kitchen powder fits into it without rearranging anything.

It also suits a smaller dog or a bigger one, since the label gives amounts by weight and the canister is not built around one size of dog. Biscuit is twenty-seven pounds and the canister has lasted us through repeated reorders.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if your dog already eats well and cleans the bowl, because you would be adding a step and a dish for nothing. Skip it if you want a liquid you can pour straight from a carton, because this is a powder and you will be mixing it every time. Skip it if a fiddly lid and a dirty whisk are going to make you quit after two weeks, because a topper you stop using is just a canister taking up shelf space.

And skip it if you have not asked your vet, especially if your dog is on a prescription food or has a diagnosed condition, because I am a retired cook and not a medical person. Talk with your veterinarian before starting any supplement or changing food, and change anything new gradually rather than all at once. I started with less than the label amount for the first few days and worked up, and I would do the same with any topper. If your dog's stool changes or she seems off, stop and make a call.