Instructions
- Pick the leanest piece on the counter and trim what fat remains with the tip of a knife. Fat never dries, it only goes rancid, and a treat that turns is one your dog will refuse long before you notice why.
- Firm the breast in the freezer for an hour before you slice it. Raw poultry drags under the blade and tears into ragged edges; half-frozen, it cuts clean.
- Cut against the grain at roughly 6 mm if your dog is small or an older one, and with the grain for a jaw that wants something to work on. Grain direction is the only thing here that changes how hard the treat is to chew.
- Dust the powdered eggshell over the cut strips rather than stirring it into anything. There is no liquid in this recipe to dissolve it, so it rides on the surface and stays where you put it.
- Lay the strips on mesh without letting any two touch, and keep them on one tray level if you can. Poultry has to be held at 72 °C the whole way through, and a crowded tray shields the pieces underneath from the air doing that work.
- Dry at 72 °C for 12 hours. Test one from the middle tray: it should tear rather than bend, with no soft or shiny patch anywhere along the torn edge.
- Anything that still feels cool or springy goes back for another couple of hours. Turkey holds water in the thick of the muscle and the outside dries first, which makes a strip feel finished before it is.
- Cool the strips on a rack, then bag them. In a sealed bag in a cool cupboard they hold two to four weeks; frozen, six months, and the freezer is the honest answer for a batch this size.
