Molly Treats

I stumbled across a clever hack for making ground beef jerky dog treats—spread super thin on parchment paper and baked low and slow like traditional jerky. Here’s my spin on that genius idea, whipped up as a special treat for Molly!

Ingredients

• 1 lb ground beef, lamb or venison.
• 1 C Oats
• Fruits – use a mix of the following or add no fruit
  • 1/2 C dried cranberries
  • 1/2 C blueberries – fresh seems to work best.
  • 1/2 diced apple
  • 1/2 C frozen raspberries

1. Turn oven on to convection bake to 190F.
2. Grab cookie sheet, preferably with an edge, line it with parchment paper. Get the bowl of you mixer or food processor
3. Make oatmeal using with Oats and fruits. Add 1 1/2 C water in a pan and bring it to boil. Add the oats and fruit and stir. Turn the heat to a simmer. Cook til the oatmeal is thick, usually 5 mins. Place cooked oatmeal in the mixer/food processor bowl to cool.
4. When the oatmeal is cool enough to the touch, toss the ground meat in the bowl. If using a mixer (e.g Kitchen Aid), use the paddle on a medium to high speed to whip the meat+oatmeal mixture well to create a sticky mixture.
5. Spread the mixture across the parchment paper. Get it as thin as you can to cover as much of the parchment as possible.
6. Cook in oven at 190 F convection for 3 hours. Should start shrinking.
7. Flip the slab over or if you can, put it on a cookie cooling rack in a cookie sheet. The flipping can be a bit messy.
8. Cook another 2 to 3 hours till it has a jerky like texture. When done cool on a cookie cooling rack.
9. Once cool, cut into 1/2 to 3/4″ squares, toss in a container (I like a big jar or a glass container) and store in refrigerator.