These crunchy little chicken slices are a tasty alternative to dehydrating jerky treats from raw chicken. They’re a great way to prepare and freeze fattier cuts of meat, like chicken thighs, for easy-to-serve snacks or portable pocket treats. You can also use this method with pre-cooked leftovers, as long as they are dog-safe for sharing. Let’s drool our way into the kitchen for details!
Dehydrating Chicken for Dog Treats
Dehydrating Raw Chicken
When we dehydrate meat for dog treats, we usually slice it up raw into strips and then dehydrate it, either marinated or plain, into jerky. You can use this method to dehydrate homemade chicken jerky dog treats, easy peasy.
Boneless skinless chicken breast works best, in my experience. As noted in our pet chef guide for chicken jerky, chicken breast is lean and works great for excellent for slicing. You can also use other cuts, like chicken thigh, but it is not quite as easy. Thighs need to be trimmed, are hard to slice neatly, and tend to feel a bit oily (like most fattier meats) after dehydrating.
Dehydrating Pre-Cooked Chicken
Chicken thigh jerky treats are fine, as long as you’re storing them frozen. But then I got to thinking about alternatives. Including pre-cooking. Over time, I’ve come to prefer dry-frying thighs to cook out fat, then slicing and dehydrating. It’s extra prep, but makes for a drier and also crunchier textured treat. The pre-cooked then dehydrated chicken thighs come out like little crunchy chicken cookies or chips. They’re also easier to handle before/after dehydration and have the safety boost of being fully cooked, too.
Dehydrating Leftover Cooked Meat
Finished the family feast and have more leftovers than you know what to do with? If you’re planning to share a nibble or using leftovers in homemade dog food or treats, make sure your cooking and seasoning methods are dog-friendly. Lean meats and preparation methods are healthier, and be careful with any added seasonings and sauces. Cooked bones are a firm no for safety, but can be saved to make stock or to slow simmer into a doggone delicious and healthy bone broth.
We’re using chicken thighs here, but you can this method with any safe and suitable cooked meat that you dog enjoys. Turkey-lover Humphrey suggest that it would be great for leftover turkey meat from a Thanksgiving or a Christmas feast.
Tasty Chicken Thighness for Sir Humphrey Highness
Chicken breast is a go-to for many dog lovers (and people). It’s lean, relatively affordable, versatile, and its also a lower-purine meat for moderated diets, like many of our Dalmatian friends. But since chicken thigh is higher in taurine, especially the darker muscle meat, we sometimes like to switch things up for Humphrey and his heart health diet. Taurine is water soluble, so wet-heat cooking like boiling and steaming will reduce content. With chicken, even dry heat like baking or frying tends to leach out some liquid, but all things in life are a bit of a compromise. And cooking juices can be saved and skimmed for other use if there is a significant amount.
For the chicken thighs, I’m aiming to slowly cook them through by dry-frying in their own juices, not crispy fry. And (optional) I like to hit it with a little heat right at the end just to make sure everything is safely heated and cooked through. Most of the liquid in the pan with my thighs after cooking is liquified is fat. I’ve tried saving and skimming, but it’s not a worthwhile quantity of actual juice.
How to Make Crunchy Chicken Thigh Chips
Dehydrated Pre-Cooked Chicken Thigh Dog Treats
Note: Making dehydrated dog treats is easy and energy efficient with a food dehydrator (affiliate link), but a dehydrator isn’t essential. If you don’t have a dehydrator, you can place your prepared chicken slices on a wire rack over a lined baking tray and use the oven to replicate the function of a dehydrator. It is usually recommended to pre-heat meats to ~75C then dehydrate at ~60C, but unlike jerky made from raw meat, these thighs have been fully pre-cooked so temperature is less safety critical.
Treat Ingredients:
Choose a quantity of quality chicken thigh meat that suits your personal preferences and dehydration capacity. Boneless skinless chicken thigh cutlets are easiest, else you will need to skin and debone. I recommend doing this prior to cooking so that you remove excess fat from the skin in advance. Boning can be done at either stage, depending on preferences for cooking and shaping.
Making the Treats:
- If you’re starting with frozen chicken, defrost it in the fridge for food safety before cooking.
- Skin and/or debone your chicken thighs if/as needed (see above).
- Cook the thighs using your preferred method. A cooking method without any added fats/oils is recommended. We are dry-frying our thigh cutlets in their own juices, as noted above.
- Once cooked through, remove from the pan. You don’t want the fat tagging back along with your thighs to the next stage.
- Once cool enough to safely handle, cut your chicken thighs in preparation for dehydration.
- Arrange the slices on dehydrator racks or prepared trays. Maximise your layout for volume and efficiency, but make sure to allow some space for good air circulation through the racks for efficient and consistent dehydration.
- Dehydrate according to your specific dehydrator’s settings/instructions for meat. Unlike a raw meat drying into jerky, your cooked chicken thighs will get dry, firm, and become crunchy rather than chewy. Dehydration time will depend on your machine, size/thickness, and personal preference for dryness and texture. My current food dehydrator defaults to 10 hours for jerky, which is more than ample for any jerky/meat treats in our experience.
- Allow the chicken thigh chips to cool thoroughly before storage.
Additional Treat Tips and Tricks
- We freeze all of our homemade dog treats to be on the safer side, and these crunchy chicken chips are no exception. Since our treats don’t have any added preservatives or salt, they’re more vulnerable to spoilage than human jerky snacks. Freezing is a great way to keep things safely for longer term storage. See our storage tips for dehydrated dog treats for more information.
- Just like jerky, I can defrost small quantities of these treats any time, but my go-to is to just take some a little bit straight from the freezer and pop the treats straight into a pocket treat bag for walks or wrist pouch for running. The treats will defrost quickly from my body heat while we’re on the move. Easy as! Fresh, safe, quick, and simple.
- Keen on a marinade? You can make a dog-friendly liquid marinade or give your chicken thighs a rub with dog-friendly herbs or other seasonings and let that soak in before cooking.
Hungry for more tasty treats? There are lots of homemade dog treat ideas in our archives. You can use the categories and tags to explore, or use our internal search to sniff out something specific. Remember, treats (bought or homemade) are for spoiling your pup in moderation. Different animals have different preferences (likes/dislikes), just like people. Some pets may have special dietary requirements and/or food allergies/intolerances. If you’re ever in doubt or have questions about what’s suitable for your pet, have a chat with your trusted vet.
