Jerky Anyone | GBGV

Bert asks me how to make jerky

Jerky anyone?  Calling all jerky fans – this is a post of you!

Mom is a bit of a health nut, she exercises and eats pretty well but she likes to have some “bad” food too and we live pretty much by the same philosophy.  Mom says as long as we earn them we can have snacks and we do earn them – trust me…miles and miles of walking and running under out paws!  Mom likes to buy healthier dog snacks for us like the ones at Trader Joes but

Looks like we’re ready to start baking!

sometimes a good old Milkbone is just the right snack.  We really enjoy natural snacks and one of our favorites all along has been chicken jerky.

If you have a dog you are probably aware of the problems with many of the chicken snacks from China and if you are not aware, please make sure and read this.  It seems like most of the “healthy” dog snacks like jerky or other chicken items are coming from China which is producing tainted products

Mom, how long is 2 hours in dog hours?

that are killing dogs.  The big stores like Costco, Walmart, Target are all selling this brands like Waggin Train and Milo’s Kitchen even though the FDA has advised against feeding these products to dogs.  There are plenty of other brands out there that are also made in China but they all have two things in common – they are dangerous/deadly for dogs and they try to hide the made in China on the packaging.  Many list the company name and address in the USA and then somewhere totally

Oh mom, these are looking nice!

different in small letters you see the made in China.  Mom has been emailing these big stores to ask them to remove the products from their shelves but they are putting profit over pups.  It is hard to find chicken jerky that is made in the USA, and if we find it, the packages are usually small and expensive, so mom had an idea.

One day last week mom asked me if I would help her make our own chicken jerky, it could not be that hard.  I said I would help so she went out and got a dehydrator and

Oh yummers – I have to taste them!

some chicken breasts.  Lucky for mom’s pocketbook, Gramma called before mom opened the dehydrator and she told mom that we could make the jerky right in the oven and did not need the dehydrator – cool, more money for chicken!!!  So, mom returned the dehydrator and we got started making the jerky in the oven.  Another plus is that on the box the dehydrator said 7 hrs for chicken jerky and our regular oven needed just over 2!

Perfect refrigerator placement!

Now, if you are going to help your mom with this, it is more of a supervisory job than a hands on job like baking because the knife is very dangerous and raw chicken can make us dogs sick, so just supervise and advise your mom.  As a side note, homemade chicken jerky is also a great cat snack, so, of course, my cat Bert wanted to help out as well.  Mom did a pretty good job of slicing and placing the strips on the baking sheets and we actually had way too much chicken so guess what was for dinner for mom???

We put the jerky in the oven for what seemed to me like 2 days, not 2 hours.  The time went by so slowly and that wonderful aroma filled our house, I could barely keep my fur on I was so excited to try it out!  Mom finally took it out of the oven and put the strips on the racks to cool.  This is where the helping gets really fun because someone has to taste the jerky to make sure it is good and I volunteered – oh man was it yummy!!!  My darn cat bro Bert somehow snuck in and stole a piece too.  He is such a bad boy, seriously a bad boy!

Once they cooled we all got to have another piece or two and then mom put it in a sealed bag in the refrigerator.  Now when your mom puts it away, make sure that it is on a lower shelf in the refrig so you can access it easily yourself if you feel the need to have a piece.

I have typed up the recipe for you so you can give it a try yourself.  Just click here for the pdf that you can print or save on your own computer.  The other good thing is you can make as much or as little as you want so depending on the size of your dog or number of dogs you may want to make more or less of it.

Enjoy!

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