It’s been a while since I made Ted some dried liver treats, and he does love them, plus I’d run out of frozen liver for his raw meals so last weekend I thought I’d get enough to make some treats too.
These treats seem to go down just as well with dogs as the dried ox heart treats I’ve posted about before (Ted recommends … Dried Ox Heart Training Treats). If you want to see all the recipes I’ve posted so far then click on the Ted’s Training Treats category to the right. They all meet my criteria of having a good strong smell and a good strong flavour.
Firstly thank you to the raw meaty bones yahoo group where I picked up this recipe for Dried Liver Treats. I tend to get lambs liver but any liver will do. Most liver tends to be very reasonably priced, bonus! Here it is in its raw form.
It’s one of the stinkier raw foods that I feed Ted, he salivates whilst he’s waiting for me to hand it to him!
Pre heat the oven to 100 degrees (I like to make these on a Sunday when the oven has been on for a roast that way we use less energy as the oven is warm anyway).
Get the liver out of the fridge. At this point your dog is going to check if the fridge door means anything good is coming his way and is going to be veeeeeery interested in what you are doing. If you are tempted to give him a bit of raw liver make it a very very small piece if he’s not used to raw organ meat. Organ meat is very rich and dogs need to slowly develop their tolerance to it, anything more than a small piece (think the size of your fingernail at MOST) is likely to cause bottom explosions!
Pop the liver in boiling water for half an hour.
You can make these without boiling first but it is messier (liver is difficult to cut up). Or you can just plunge into boiling water until the liver changes colour, at this point it should make it easier for you cut it for baking.
Remove from the water and once cool enough to chop cut into treat sized pieces. If you’ve boiled them for half an hour you can just chop it up, let it cool and then freeze but I prefer to bake them.
I cut into about 1 inch cubes and break pieces off as I’m training. Unlike cooking tiny treat sized pieces it stops the treat going too hard and helps you keep track of how much you’ve fed (important to start with as dogs can get upset tummies from too much liver even if it’s dried).
Spread on a baking sheet and pop in the oven for 1 to 2 hours until dry (depending on size of treats). Here’s what you end up with:
I do a batch (usually a bigger batch than above) and freeze them, putting a few days worth in the fridge at a time to defrost.
Here’s the recipe all in one place for ease:
- Pre heat oven to 100 degrees
- Boil the liver for half an hour
- Once cool enough to chop cut into treat sized pieces
- Spread on a baking sheet and pop in the oven for 1 to 2 hours until dry (depending on size of treats)
And here’s what I see in my kitchen at various stages of the cooking process …
