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Because there is little consensus in regards to what's absolutely essential nutrition-wise, the percentage each category (e.g. protein, starch, etc) of ingredients should be in homemade food, and how much to feed your pet, please do some thorough research and thinking before embarking on this type of feeding.

Once you are ready to start making your pet's food, go to your local PetSmart and weigh him/her.  Weigh weekly or every other week while you tweak your formulations and recipes.  Keep a notebook listing the date and weight.  This is important so that you know if your pet is gaining, losing or maintaining weight.  Once your pet is at its ideal weight and maintains it, you can weigh monthly.  Maintaining ideal weight means your pet is getting exactly the right amount of food.  

If you are worried about your pet getting proper nutrition with homemade food, give vitamins.  PetSmart carries GNC's line of pet vitamins and supplements.  While I know some people use human vitamins, I'm not sure that's entirely safe and I haven't compared human and pet vitamin labels side-by-side to compare them.  If you give your pet human vitamins, DO NOT give them children's vitamins which contain a rather large amount of sugar and artificial flavorings to make them more appealing to children.  That is not to say pet vitamins won't have some sugar or flavorings added; it probably won't be as much as in children's vitamins.  Pet vitamins also do not contain artificial colors.

Do realize that this type of feeding will take a bit of extra time and work, especially at first.  You will be discovering what your pet will or will not eat, ingredients he or she may be allergic to, finding the right amount of food to keep your pet at his or her ideal weight, formulating and tweaking recipes to account for all of the preceeding, and finding your groove with food preparation.

Understand that this is not simply plop a steak in the food bowl thing.  Your pet's nutrition is important, and there needs to be some balance and variety to ensure he or she is getting an adequate diet.  Expect to include protein, vegetable, fruit, dairy, and starch, and that not everything is equal or good for your pet.

And while there are books available about making your own pet food, realize that not everyone who writes a book knows what they're talking about.  For the most part, books are one person's opinion and what they do.  Read all the reviews and descriptions of any book you are considering before buying it.  I wish I had paid more attention to reviews for one of the books I ordered.