I know how sore your legs can be while you are cooking with your dog around. You stand on your left leg and karate kid with the right so that your dog cannot reach the counter. Many of you have obedient dogs and this does not apply most of the time.
One-legged kitchen feats are good exercise, but what about the times you just want to relax while making a meal?
Well, I do not have a solution to that. What I do have is seven recipes that explain how to cook sweet potatoes for dogs. I know that this means more culinary acrobatics, but your dog’s delight will make up for it.
Luckily, it does not take a lot of prep or cook time for any of these, and you will even have some spare time to play hide and seek with your dog.
Sweet Potato Dog Recipes To Make Your Dog Drool (More)
The nutritive value of a sweet potato is well known to the entire world. While it is not acclaimed for its protein content, the carbohydrates and vitamins are off the chart in this vegetable. Perhaps it is most famed for the beta-carotene, vitamin A and potassium reserves.
In addition to that, they are also rich in vitamin C, calcium and have antioxidants that reduce cell deterioration. Important: a sweet potato is not a yam. Yams have a rougher exterior and a darker peel color.
Though it is quite caloric, the sweet potato overflows with stuff you want your dog to eat and has very few unwanted nutrients. Naturally, that means it is an energy bomb and works best with dogs that are highly energetic.
So, what can you do with a sweet potato that works any time of the day? You can make homemade dog treats, some dessert style chews and crispy sweet potato delights.
One of my favorites is the sweet potato popsicle. You can directly participate in your dog’s food consumption by being the popsicle stand.
That is not the only freezing format you can create with a little bit of kitchen chemistry. If you prefer baking, there are cookie and chips variations too.
The baked, boiled or mashed sweet potatoes recipes are among the least time consuming things you can make without skimping on taste and texture. Before preparing any of these, make sure that your dog is not allergic or sensitive to the ingredients.
Feeding raw sweet potatoes to your dog was found to cause intestinal blockages. If you want more information on that topic, the AKC has a good summary of the most important things regarding sweet potatoes and dogs.
Alright, Gordog Pawsey time.
Sweet Potato Dog Treat Recipes
I went with treats first because they are an absolute godsend. Dogs love forbidden things. When you cook something that they cannot eat, they will grow an obsessive love towards it. You can pretend the sweet potato treats or meals you are cooking are something exclusive too.
Treats are very convenient — you can use them as rewards during training, nutritional boosters during the day, and in some cases, even as an addition to meals when you cannot carry much with you. A dog will care whether it is tasty, not about the physical shape of the food.
Something that baked, dehydrated and frozen sweet potato treats have over the softer food recipes is that they work the teeth.
Another thing that makes treats the ideal sweet potato format is the fact that you cannot constantly feed your dog sweet potatoes or some of the ingredients required to make the treats.
You can easily adjust the treat “dosage” because they are usually small and will not go bad as quickly. Keep in mind that smaller dogs will require smaller treats.
Plain Sweet Potato Popsicles
Depending on what kind of flavor you are going for, you can combine several ingredients for this one. The most basic sweet potato popsicle has only two ingredients: sweet potatoes and coconut milk.
Since the popsicle size depends on the size of your molds I will keep it as universal as possible. While we are on the topic of mods — I advise using silicone molds that help get the frozen stuff quicker and do not break. You also do some ecologically sound work avoiding plastic.
You Will Need
• 3 small or 2 medium-sized sweet potatoes
• 1.5-2 ounces of coconut milk
• peeler
• potato masher
• silicone or plastic ice cube molds
• fork
• colander
• tablespoon
• ladle
Preparation
1. The first step is boiling the sweet potatoes. I always start with two medium sized sweet taters. After peeling them, you will need to cook them in boiling water for around twenty minutes.
The age of the sweet potato can quicken or slow down the cooking time. To significantly shorten the cooking time, cut them into smaller pieces.
For good measure, you can use a fork, toothpick or metal straw to check whether it is wholly cooked. I prefer the straw method because it provides a sample of the sweet potato’s core. If the middle is cooked, you will know the rest of it is too.
2. Once done, drain the water in a colander and make sure the potatoes are not wet. The water can cause the pasty and rich texture to dilute into a mushy mess. Use a cloth or roll them on a paper towel to dry off.
Do not let the sweetatoes cool off. They have to be mashed while still hot. Put them in a pot and start mashing. Do not add anything yet. We want to see how creamy they get before adding anything. You can tell the mash is dry if it keeps flaking instead of becoming smooth.
If you got a decent quality sweet potato, you will probably need two or three tbsp of coconut milk. Do not pour them all at once. Instead, wait to get the best possible mash consistency before adding anything.
Then add the first tbsp and mash well again. Consistency is key. You want it to be creamy so that the mixture does not drip or look slimy when you let it hang from the masher. There should be no chunks.
3. When the mixture is perfect, take a ladle and fill the molds up so that they are slightly under the edge and put a wooden stick in them.
Give the popsicles at least two hours before checking if they are frozen. I like keeping them in the freezer for around five hours before trying to detach them. Do not use plastic sticks or toothpicks because they are a hazard for your dog.
Peanut Butter Sweetato Cookies
If you feel like sweet potatoes and coconut milk are too rudimentary for your dog’s incredibly sensitive palate, then the addition of peanut butter will take it a step further. However, you will need to pay attention to the peanut butter ingredients.
An artificial sweetener called xylitol is often part of store-bought peanut butter, and it is toxic for a dog’s body. You can always make your own peanut butter if you want to go full homemade.
You Will Need
• 3 small or 2 medium-sized sweet potatoes
• 2 cups of peanut butter
• 1/2 or 1 cup of rice flour
• 1.5-2 ounces of coconut milk
• peeler
• potato masher
• rolling pin
• cookie cutter
Preparation
1. The potato prep is the same: peel, slice, boil for twenty or so minutes and then mash. Once you are done, take the PB and add it to the batter in increments. Since the peanut butter has oil in it, you might want to try mixing the batter without the coconut milk.
If the consistency is not right, add a teaspoon or two of coconut milk to thin out the mixture. Since this involves baking, you will need some kind of flour. I recommend rice flour over oat or wheat because many dogs are allergic to wheat.
2. Working with rice flour will be slightly weirder because it absorbs more water more quickly than wheat flour. With your half-done PB and sweet potato batter, start adding the flour. Do not add a large amount immediately. Smaller pinches as you mix will give you greater control over the batter.
The right amount of water or coconut milk will depend on the amount of the batter and original consistency of the PB. Your potato masher should not be clean from mashing the peanut butter and sweet potato.
3. This time, the consistency of the mixture should be dense. Rolling the dough out can be difficult if it sticks too much. Nothing a pinch of flour cannot sort out. The thickness of the rolled out dough should ideally be a quarter inch but no thicker than half an inch.
The dough should hold its shape once it has been shaped. If the dough starts falling apart then you need to add more peanut butter or sweet potato to keep everything together.
Preheat oven to 350 or 375, and bake the cookies for ten to fifteen minutes. If you want to give your dog some bonus crunch and a bit of teeth exercise, leave them for an additional five to seven minutes. Monitor the color change because our charcoal cookie recipe is on another page.
Sweet Potato Dog Chews
The crunchiness of popsicles is great for the sound effects but can sometimes work against you if you are in a hurry. Holding the stick for your dog to lick and chew can be pretty time consuming albeit a great bonding exercise.
Making chews involves almost no prep and requires only one ingredient. There was never a better time for improvising with healthy homemade dog treats.
You Will Need
• 1 or 2 medium-sized sweet potatoes
• knife
• parchment paper or baking sheet
Preparation
Preheat oven to 250 degrees while you get work done on the taters. Get any size of sweet potato and cut it lengthwise into thin slices without peeling it.
The cuts should resemble beef jerky in terms of shape and size. They should not be thinner than a quarter inch and thicker than a third of an inch. They are supposed to be chewy.
Once done with the cutting, put parchment paper or baking sheet into the oven tray to avoid them sticking to the bottom. Bake for roughly three hours to retain the chewiness with a bit of crisp on top and edges.
To check if they are done, you can use a spoon to press on the top. You should feel a bit of gamy resistance when pressing on the slice. The crust should be crispy but flexible. I told you this was an easy recipe.
Dehydrated Sweet Potatoes Make Your Life Easier
Getting the moisture out of the sweet potatoes makes them even more versatile of an ingredient. You are essentially creating new food out of old food. Dehydrating sweet potatoes is particularly fun if you love DIY stuff.
There are multiple options for this one: diced, shredded or pureed before dehydration. The type of cut will mainly influence your future use of it. I would recommend diced for easy serving as dog treats.
Shredded or pureed are great when you want to implement them into the dog’s diet alongside kibble or a home cooked eating regime. This format mixes well with other veggies you feed to your dog such as broccoli, spinach etc.
The total time should be around eight and a half hours. The long hours are due to the process of dehydration being a waiting game more than anything else. Other than getting the temperatures right, you will not have to do much.
Keep in mind that this recipe requires a dehydrator. There are other ways to dehydrate, but those can get messy and have significantly longer total time of preparation.
You Will Need
• 3 or 4 medium-sized sweet potatoes
• knife
• grater
• potato masher
• colander
• parchment paper or baking sheet
• dehydrator
Preparation
Pureed
For diced and pureed versions you should bake the sweet potatoes first. The oven should be preheated to 350. Poke some holes in the sweetato before putting them inside. Thirty five or forty five minutes should be enough to get them soft and tender throughout.
After you let them rest outside the oven until they are completely cooled off, grab a potato masher and mash the heck out of them. If you have a decent blender, you can use that too.
The puree should be easy to spread on a dehydrator tray. Make sure that the spread is not thinner than an eighth of an inch or thicker than a quarter of an inch.
Set the dehydrator to 135 degrees and leave it to dry for six to eight hours. It should look like a thin piece of leather once it is dehydrated. It should peel off without sticking or darker colored patches. Dry until the spread is of the same shade of color.
Six to eight hours will give the spread some flexibility too. You can roll it up and use any way you like. For using it in dog meals and treats, you can leave it to dry even more, until it is brittle and can be turned into tiny fragments.
Diced
The process is the same except for the mashing. Instead, you will dice the sweet potato into consistent cubes that are in the quarter to half inch range. Bake at the same temperature and for the same time.
Because the cubes are much thicker than the spread, you are looking at eight to twelve hours of dehydration (depending on the thickness of cubes) at 125 degrees.
If you want to check whether they are dried out, select the thickest cube and slice in half. You should not be seeing any wet spots.
Shredded
This is perhaps the easiest method because you can shred raw sweet potatoes. You will have to rinse the shreds in cool water to get some of the starch off and keep the color nice and bright.
Get some water boiling in a pot big enough to fit all the shreds. Get them out of the cold water into the boiling one and let them cook for five minutes. Once done, get them into cold water again until completely cool.
When putting the shreds on the dehydrator, make sure you evenly spread them in a single layer because it will decrease the time of dehydration. It will take between six to eight hours at 125 degrees to get a fully dry batch.
These should be stored in airtight containers and in the least cold part of your fridge. If you have a pantry that is cold and dark, it could be the best spot.
How To Use Them
The diced ones can be used as straight up dog treats. You can mix them with other food in their dried out form or rehydrate them by steaming or just soaking with wet dog food.
If you decide to go for the pureed dehydrated sweet potato, you can even grind it to make flour out of it. You can create some of the treat recipes with this type of flour too.
The shreds go great with cooked rice and chicken. They are almost like a salad with a bit more crunch. Your imagination is the only limit as to what to do with it.
Sweet Potato Slices Are A Good Addition To Your Dog’s Protein
The size of your dog will probably be the main factor determining what kind of recipe you are looking for. If you have a Corgi, some of the treats we talked about previously will be an excellent addition to its diet.
If you have a Rottweiler, the treats could be a bit underwhelming, which is why I left the best for last. The slices are very easy to make and they look like stuff us humans eat too. That alone makes it a guaranteed hit for your dog.
For more ideas on Rottweiler diets and eating regimes, check out these articles:
Best dog food for Rottweiler
Best treats for Rottweiler
Rottweiler raw diet
You Will Need
• 2 or 3 medium-sized sweet potatoes
• 2 tbsp coconut oil
• knife
• parchment paper or baking sheet
Preparation
Get those sweet potatoes well cleaned. You should not leave any dirt or blemishes on the potato since there is no peeling with this recipe. Some recommend always peeling a sweet potato, while others say leaving it on is fine.
My recommendation would be to try without peeling. If you notice your dog having stomach problems, the peel should come off.
Slice the sweet potato horizontally into chips. Make sure they are all the same thickness to avoid getting different bakes between sizes. The best thickness is around a quarter inch.
Check to see if you missed some blemish or piece of peel in case you want them that way, and mix them with coconut oil. Two tablespoons are more than enough because the oil is there to prevent the sweetatoes from sticking to the paper or sheet.
Preheat oven to 275 degrees, put the parchment paper or baking sheet in the tray and evenly distribute the chips. You can also use oven bags.
Let the sweet potatoes bake for an hour and a half. To check if they are done, choose the thickest chip and slice it open. If you see some raw spots inside, leave for another five minutes. Monitor the color after an hour and a half to make sure they do not burn.
Prior to storing them in airtight containers, make sure they are completely cold. You can use them as a side dish for your dog’s main protein or dish them out for it to catch them in the air.
Too Many Cooks
I hope the recipes gave you inspiration to try something new. Switch things up and put a spin on these recipes. There are definitely more than five answers on how to cook sweet potatoes for dogs, but I believe these will give you ideas instead of being complex and set in stone.
Whichever recipe you follow, you can add things you know your dog is not allergic or sensitive to instead of the proposed ones. It is all about creating a flexible pattern to follow.
Have a great time cooking for your dog.
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