Make these homemade chicken treats and your pets will love you!
I’ve wanted to make my own treats for a while now, to see if the girls like them more than the ones I buy at pet shops. And they do love them more! I made little hearts, because Valentine’s day is just around the corner and this is my way of showing them that I love them. I think they know that anyway, but a special treat like this one makes things more fun. Kim was going crazy once she realized that I was cooking some chicken in the kitchen. She kept crying behind the door. But it was all worth it.
This is a simple recipe and you don’t have to be a skilled baker to do this. If you have more chicken breast on hand as you make this, my advice is to cook it all and then give the extra chicken (that you don’t need for the treats) to your cat (or dog). From my experience, cats LOVE cooked shredded chicken, mixed with water the chicken was cooking in.
As you can see, the girls just loooove them.
Homemade chicken treats for cats and dogs
Recipe makes about 100 really small treats.
- Yield: 100 treats 1x
Ingredients
- 140g (1 1/2 cups) cooked chicken breast, shredded (equals about 350g of raw chicken breast)
- 15g (1 tablespoon) margarine (or sunflower oil)
- 120 ml (1/2 cup) chicken stock (the water you cooked your chicken in)
- 120g (1 cup) whole wheat flour
- 50g (1/3 cup) polenta/cornmeal (dry)
Instructions
- Cook the chicken breast first
First cut away any fat/skin. Put it in a pot and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil, lower the temperature to medium-high and let cook until it’s fork-tender. Remove the pot from heat and let chicken cool to warm temperature. - Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Cover a baking sheet with baking paper.
- Take the chicken out of the pot (but save the soup!) and shred it with a knife and a fork (or any other method that you like).
- In a bowl, mix together the chicken, water and margarine (you can warm it up in the microwave to make things easier). You don’t need a mixer for this, just use a fork. In a separate bowl mix together the cornmeal and flour.
- Add the dry mixture to the wet one in three additions. (You can shorten the process and just throw it all together, but I like to do it slowly, to make sure I don’t end up with a dough that is too dry.)
- Once you’ve formed the dough, slightly flour your working surface, then knead dough for a few seconds. Roll it out to about 0,5 – 1 cm (1/4 inch) thick. Cut out your treats in any desired shape and place them on the baking sheet. They can be placed close together, as they won’t get bigger during baking. Bake for 20 minutes in the center of the oven. Let them cool for about 10-15 minutes before your kitty or pooch try them!
Notes
These treats are chewy and easily breakable. Keep them in an airtight container in the refrigerator.
While this recipe uses chicken breast, you could experiment with darker meat such as chicken thighs. Use more than 140g though (because of the bones). Cook thighs as you would the chicken breast. Once the meat starts falling off the bone, it’s ready to be used. Take out the amount of liquid necessary for the recipe, then cook the bones for another 1-2 hours to make a really great stock for your pet.
Hi! How long do these treats keep in the refrigerator?
Hi Sydney, I would say no more than 5 days!
It’s been a long time since I made these, but I wouldn’t keep them longer than that. I have 3 cats, so they eat quite a lot, but you could make a smaller batch and not risk any going bad.
Hope this helps!
My twin sister has a malmute husky mix, I have a rat terrier-fox terrier mix and we have 2 kittens so thanks for the recipe.
That’s quite a group you have, love it!