Use Up Your Turkey Leftovers

If you celebrate the holidays with a large turkey dinner, you may have more leftovers than you know what to do with. Leftover turkey & gravy can be turned into many more meals for the freezer, and the carcass can be used to make delicious soup stalk. Once the stalk is strained, instead of tossing all of the vegetables and tiny pieces of meat that were strained out, it can all be repurposed into training treats for your pet.

Double Purpose Leftovers for Stalk, then Treats

Everything from your soup stalk base, such as carrots, celery, onions, parsley, turkey pieces from the carcass, giblets, and neck meat can be added to your dog treats.  If you make stalk with garlic, don’t add that to the treats; it’s not good for dogs.  If you don’t get enough meat from the stalk pot, you could always toss in some additional meat from your leftovers, keeping in mind that dogs only need about 20% protein from their food.

Whole Wheat Turkey Dog Treats

For every 2 cups of chopped up turkey/veggies/potatoes/leftovers, add 2 cups of whole-wheat flour, and an egg.  The dough will be roughly the consistency of cookie dough – moist but not sticky.  If you want to cut the dough into shapes (such as dog-bones) before baking, add more flour to make a stiffer dough that can be rolled.  If not, spread the dough on a no-stick cookie sheet, pressing the dough out towards the edges so that it’s the same thickness across the baking sheet.

Bake the dough at 350 degrees for approximately 10 minutes.  After 10 minutes, the dough should be mostly-baked but soft enough to remove from the cookie sheet in sections with a spatula/pancake flipper, so that it can be further cut into small pieces.

Cut the treats into the size that you want for your final product.  We cut ours into small cubes, and did a second batch in an even-smaller size, about the size of a pea.  Since our dog needs a lot of training interaction to keep her busy, we go through a lot of training treats!  The small size gives her a reward without distracting her from the training to eat the treat.

Once the treats are cut into the size that you want for your final product, spread on cookie sheet and continue baking.  Reduce the oven temperature to about 200 degrees, checking the treats regularly to ensure that they’re baked but not burning.

If the treats will be used right away, they don’t need to be completely dehydrated and can take on the texture of a soft cookie.  If the plan is to keep the treats longer, they should be completely dry and can be stored in containers or zip lock bags.  The completely dry treats do not need to be refrigerated. Use these yummy baked goods as high-value treats when you’re training your pet.

We made these treats after stumbling across a recipe on the food blog Dinner with Julie. The author of the original recipe has an entire cookbook dedicated to recipes for your dog.  If you try making these treats or if you have the cookbook, let us know how you like it!