Winner winner, chicken is more than just for dinner! Get the scoop on how to make chicken jerky dog treats. Chicken is a tasty and affordable alternative to more traditional styles of jerky treats made with beef and other red meats. Sniff your way into the Dalmatian DIY dog treat kitchen for the details on how to make DIY dehydrated chicken jerky dog treats, with tips and tricks for different cuts of chicken.
Making Homemade Jerky Dog Treats
Why We Love Homemade Jerky Dog Treats
Dehydrating meat into jerky-style dog treats makes it easy to store, share, and portable for walkies. Sound pawfect? In any meat or flavour, jerky is a favourite for our dogs (and their furfriends), and it’s one of our go-to treat making methods. Jerky is healthy and very easy to make. We almost always have at least one batch in our freezer, but often more for variety. Want to make your own? Let’s dive in!
Pet Chef Help for Chicken Jerky
Many years ago, we shared an intro post about making beef jerky treats for dogs, with tips for making different styles of jerky with beef and lamb. They’re still go-to favourites, but in the years since, we’ve expanded the collection of homemade jerky dog treats on the blog with other meats, marinades, dry rubs, and more.
Based on questions from some of our readers, it’s been noted that we have chicken jerky recipes without first sharing a basic intro to plain chicken jerky. Sorry friends! So, we’re adding this special post for anyone looking for plain and simple chicken jerky dog treat instructions, or perhaps needs a helping paw with different cuts or chicken prep for making jerky. You can also use this as a pet chef help reference on the basics of making chicken jerky dog treats if you’re experimenting with our marinated or rubbed chicken jerkies.
Getting Started with Making Homemade Jerky Dog Treats
All you need to make jerky is a suitable cut of meat and a few basic kitchen tools/appliances for prepping, dehydrating, and storing. A lot of dog owners love the idea of making homemade jerky dog treats, but are put off by the idea of needing special appliances. Which brings us to…
Do You Need a Dehydrator to Make Jerky Dog Treats? Nope!
A food dehydrator (affiliate link) makes it really easy to make homemade jerky dog treats, but you can also make them in your oven. We love using our dehydrator, but know that they might not be in everyone’s budget, kitchen space, or wish list. We include oven notes in the instructions with our jerky dog treat posts for readers who’d like to make treats without a dehydrator.
If you’re new to making jerky and/or dehydrated dog treats, another helpful reference is our comprehensive post on dog treat dehydration and storage. It will take you through the basics of dehydrating treats, different types of dehydrated treats, food safety, and treat storage tips.
Choosing Chicken for Homemade Jerky Dog Treats
Meat Options for Making Jerky Dog Treats
You can use any variety of lean dog-friendly muscle meat to make jerky dog treats. Lean meats are easier to dehydrate and store safely. Fatty meat is harder to dehydrate, less healthful, and the jerky has a higher risk of going rancid. Some meats may also need extra prep, like pre-freezing, pre-heating, and/or post-heating for food safety. Choose with care and check local food safety guidelines for your meat sources, especially if you’re considering options outside the regulated human consumption chain, like homekill or game meats.
This pet chef jerky guide is all about making simple chicken jerky dog treats. If you’d prefer something other than chicken, you can take a sniff around our homemade jerky dog treat recipes or use our internal site search to look for something specific. For beef or lamb, our post on easy beef jerky dog treats is a good starter. If you’d like to try fish, check out our crunchy dehydrated fish jerky.
Choosing Cuts of Chicken for Making Jerky Dog Treats
As noted above, lean muscle meats are best for making jerky. Boneless skinless chicken breasts are one of the best chicken cuts for making jerky dog treats. They’re naturally lean and excellent for slicing into tidy strips (especially with our tips below). They’re also a great lower-purine option for purine moderated diets, shout out to our Dalmatian pals. And chicken breast is an affordable option for meat, at least in our part of the world.
Different cuts carry different nutritional profiles, so we’re also going to include a demo with boneless skinless chicken thighs. The darker muscle meat is richer in taurine, but not as lean. Thighs require more effort to prep, trim, and are not as tidy for slicing and tend to be a bit oiler after dehydrating, even when well-trimmed. However, we have some sneaky tricks below if you’re prepping thigh meat for dehydrating.
If you’re looking for more adventurous options for dehydrating, as long as the cuts are lean and safe for consumption, you can experiment. For example, we recently shared instructions for dehydrating beef heart dog treats and trimmed chicken hearts could be prepped as a mini version if you’re feeling brave. As noted above, muscle meats are usually the easiest to work with for making jerky. Minces are not my go-to, but can be used for other dehydrated treats. See out post on homemade dehydrated turkey mince biscotti dog treats for more background on using mince and a tasty treat recipe. Our biscotti treats were made with turkey mince, but lean chicken mince would be an easy substitution.
Quality Ingredients for Quality Treats
As always, quality ingredients make for quality treats. Shop from reliable sources for food safety and nutritional quality. Chicken tends to be a more affordable meat option where we live, but I like to keep an eye out for sales no matter what type of jerky we’re prepping. You can freeze the meat until you’re ready to use it, or make the jerky and then freeze the finished treats. Chicken for jerky can be prepared from fresh or frozen meat, but slicing the chicken meat from partially frozen (or partially defrosted) while its firmer is often much easier than fresh or fully thawed. Raw chicken is a slippery pain for slicing into strips. More on that below.
Food Safety
Raw chicken can carry food-borne illnesses, so practice good food safety and hygiene during sourcing, prep, handling, clean-up, and storage. Dehydration cooks and dries at low heat, but it’s still important to ensure you start with quality meat, the temperatures are suitable, and the finished jerky is stored and handled with care. Freezing chicken before making jerky can reduce some fo the potential risks, most notibly campylobacter.
If your dehydrator has a meat/fish setting, your treats should be ready to serve after the standard dehydration process is followed. If you’re using an oven, the general process is similar, but you’ll need check your temperatures and ensure good airflow. Our notes within jerky recipes recommend using a heat-safe wire rack over a lined baking tray for better airflow than periodic flipping, with the oven fan on if settings allow.
With either method, to be extra safety conscious, you can use pre-heating or other measures as added precautions. Pre-heating is often used as an added safety step when making jerky for human consumption to ensure it reaches a suitable cooking temperature early in the process, while the meat is still wet. Dogs are usually much more resilient to such things than people, but humans will also be handling the treats so a little extra caution might be helpful for some situations.
Plain vs. Seasoned Chicken Jerky Dog Treats
Plain is Pawfect
The simplest option for dog-friendly jerky is just straight up dehydrated meaty goodness, and the same goes for chicken. All you need to make chicken jerky dog treats is quality chicken muscle meat, as noted above and demonstrated in the examples below. Our dogs love plain jerky. Easy and delish! Anytime you see a jerky recipe with a marinade, rub, or other seasonings here on the blog, they’re optional. But, if you’re in the mood for experimenting, chicken is also a great base for adding dog-friendly seasonings.
Marinades, Rubs, and Other Seasonings
Because chicken is easier to slice for jerky when it’s partially frozen and firm, the remainder of the thaw time before dehydrating can be the perfect opportunity to add a marinade, rub, or other seasonings. Mix it up, mix it in, and then pop your prepped chicken jerky slices back into the fridge to fully defrost before moving on to the dehydration stage of jerky prep. Easy as!
The easiest way to marinate (or dry rub) prepared meats, fish, or other foods for making jerky is to toss everything together into a Ziploc bag. However, using a dish works great, just a little extra clean up and no extra waste. I usually add my seasonings and then mix by hand in a dishwasher-friendly glass dish with a fitted cover.
Making DIY Chicken Jerky Dog Treats with Breast Meat
Chicken breast? Slices best. The easiest cut of muscle meat for making chicken jerky is probably boneless skinless chicken breast. The large pieces of muscle meat are lean and really easy to slice into nicely sized strips for jerky, especially if you are cutting while the meat is partially frozen and firm. The extra firmness really makes slicing most types of meat into jerky strips a whole lot easier.
Making DIY Chicken Jerky Dog Treats with Thigh Meat
Chicken thigh? Oh my… As noted above, darker meats, like chicken thigh, have a different nutritional profile, but can be a little trickier for slicing into jerky. Thighs are also usually a little pricier for kilogram in our local shops. As with chicken breast, it is much easier to cut the thighs into pieces for jerky when the meat is partially frozen and firm.
When trimming and slicing thighs, it can be handy to be preparing meat for two or more methods. For example, I prepared the pictured thigh pieces for jerky dog treats at the same time as marinating tandoori chicken for Dog Dad. Easy to slice sections were cut for the jerky dish, difficult to slice sections went into the tandoori dish, and any extra offcuts into a small pan for making stock. Minimal waste, maximum taste, and much easier than trying to trim and slice loose or marbled thigh sections for jerky. The jerky strips won’t be as uniform or as pretty as breast, but they’ll still be delish.
Alternatively, you can pre-cook your chicken thighs to reduce the amount of fat before slicing. They will have a different texture, but they’ll still be tasty. You can also use leftover cooked chicken (or other meat) this way, as long as it’s unseasoned and safe. I’ll share a post on our crunchy chicken chips with full details.
How to Dehydrate Chicken for Jerky Dog Treats
Note: Making jerky 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 meat on a wire rack over a lined baking tray and use the oven to replicate the function of a dehydrator. Whichever method you use, note that it is recommended to pre-heat meats to ~75C then dehydrate at ~60C. Refer to the safety information above and tips below.
Treat Ingredients:
Choose a cut and quantity of chicken that suits your personal preferences and dehydration capacity. See above for notes on types of chicken, with tips for the common cuts of chicken breast and chick thigh.
Making the Treats:
- If you’re starting with frozen chicken, defrost (or partially defrost) it in the fridge for food safety.
- Cut your chicken in preparation for dehydration, noting the information above. Thicker strips will be chewier, but will take longer to dehydrate thoroughly. If you find it difficult to slice your chicken into small thin strips, slicing from frozen may help. If you chicken is partially frozen, make sure it’s fully thawed before you start the heating/dehydration process.
- Optional: Marinate or season. If you have partially defrosted your chicken for easier slicing, you can add your marinade or dry-rub seasonings to your sliced chicken before placing the container/bag in the fridge for the chicken to finish defrosting fully.
- Optional: Pre-heat for added food safety prior to dehydrating.
- Arrange the slices of chicken 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. Make sure that your meat is cured thoroughly. It will turn colour, firm up, become dry to the touch, but still have some chewy flex. Dehydration time will depend on your machine as well as size/thickness. My current food dehydrator defaults to 10 hours for jerky, which is more than ample in our experience.
- Allow the chicken jerky strips to cool thoroughly before storage.
Stay safe, furfriends and family. Make sure that you clean all of your kitchen tools and surfaces well. Yourself too, of course. Be extra careful with your hands and the handling of objects while working with raw chicken – whether cooking for pets or for people.
Chicken Jerky Dog Treat Tips and Tricks
- Although jerky is often kept at room temperature, we freeze all of our homemade jerky dog treats to be on the safer side. Since our treats don’t have any added preservatives or salt, they’re more vulnerable to spoilage than human jerky snacks. See our storage tips for dehydrated dog treats for more information.
- I can defrost small quantities of jerky for treats any time, but my go-to is to just take some a little bit straight from the freezer and pop it into a pocket treat bag for walks or wrist pouch for running. It defrosts quickly from my body heat while we’re on the move. Fresh, safe, quick, and simple.
- Keen on a marinade? You can make a dog-friendly liquid marinade or give you prepared chicken slices a gentle rub with dog-friendly herbs or other seasonings. Our dogs enjoy chicken any way they can get their mouths on it, including deliciously plain. No need to be fancy to please these boys!
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.
