Jerky

[RadioFreeSeaLab]

Anyone make jerky?  How do you go about doing it?  Do you have a specific food dehydrator you suggest?  I love beef jerky, but I freakin' hate paying for the stuff.  Time to make my own.

[Regolith]

I'd suggest a smoker instead of a food dehydrator, if you have a place to use it/can afford it.


I don't make jerky, but my parents do.  My dad uses a smoker, my mom uses a food dehydrator.


Both are good, but the smoker wins in the taste category every time.

[thebaldguy]

I made some pretty good deer jerky years ago with my dad. We used liquid smoke and an oven to dry it in. I've seen lots of recipes over the years, from teriaki to peppered. It wasn't that hard to make, and it tasted better than the chopped/pressed/formed dry meat sticks you see in stores.

Homemade jerky doesn't last long; it gets eaten pretty fast.

[K Frame]

There's an Alton Brown Good Eats episode solely on jerkey.

You can find the recipe and basic instructions at foodtv.com

[brimic]

Yes. I go nuts and turn about 10lbs of hamburger into jerky 4 or 5 times a year.
Walmart has everything you need.
Nesco food dehydrator:~$40
Jerky gun and seasoning kit: $20
Lots of cheap, low fat, hamburger meat.
Basically you knead the jerky cure and seasoning into raw hamburger (lowest fat content hamburger you can find, I usually use 97%), load the gun with the meat and squirt thin ribbons of deliciousness onto the screens. Dry it on the highest setting for about 2 hrs, flip the strips over, then dry another 4-5 hrs. Take the strips and pad the fat off with paper toweling.
The smell it makes in the house is devine.
I only use about 1/2 of the recommended amount of jerky cure or else the jerky is too salty.
Kids love the stuff, and I'll sit down and eat it until I'm sick.
 

[Paddy]

How did they make jerky in the Old West b.w. (before walmart)?

[Perd Hapley]

Yeah, how did they preserve their ground chuck before Wal-Mart? 

[K Frame]

Wait for a good, dry, relatively cool breezy day.

Slice the meat thin.

Hang it on bushes, racks, etc. Let nature do its work.

Or, they would build small smoky fires under and around it to help dry it, preserve it, and keep blow flies off it.

[Thor]

I use a food dehydrator, hamburger, and the seasoning mix found in the WalMart sporting goods section. Otherwise, I'll use a chuck roast or venison (if I have any), sliced about an 1/8th inch in thickness, marinade overnight in soy sauce, garlic, a little sugar, salt & pepper. London broil works real nice, too. I've seen Alton Brown's show on home made jerky, and I really think he goes to a lot of trouble and excess expense. I keep my dehydrator on the lowest setting (140 degrees).

[Tallpine]

Slice the meat thin.

Actually, I think the original method was to rip the meat into strips - hence the term jerky

[mfree]

Pretty sure they had knives in the old west, Tallpine

But you did have to rip a piece off to eat it...

[K Frame]

Slice the meat thin.

Actually, I think the original method was to rip the meat into strips - hence the term jerky

Uh...

No.

Jerky is an Americanized version of the Spanish Charqui, which is derived from Quechua ch'arki, meaning "dried flesh."


This method of preparing dried meat has been observed in the 20th century in stone age tribes (using stone knives) discovered in the Amazon and New Guinea.

The same things were observed in stone age tribes in Australia and Africa when European explorers reached those areas in the 1500s through the 1700s.

Trying to rip the meat into strips is an almost impossible tasts. It's difficult to get it evenly thin enough to allow for proper drying.

[The Viking]

Slice the meat thin.

Actually, I think the original method was to rip the meat into strips - hence the term jerky

Uh...

No.

Jerky is an Americanized version of the Spanish Charqui, which is derived from Quechua ch'arki, meaning "dried flesh."


This method of preparing dried meat has been observed in the 20th century in stone age tribes (using stone knives) discovered in the Amazon and New Guinea.

The same things were observed in stone age tribes in Australia and Africa when European explorers reached those areas in the 1500s through the 1700s.

A very disturbing image pops into my head when I read "flesh"...

[Tallpine]

Do you ever do any work, Mike - or do you just study little known facts

 

[RadioFreeSeaLab]

My goal is to beomce to wealthy that I can spend my time learning useless information.  Then I can Be LIke Mike.

[K Frame]

I know a lot of facts and am able to very quickly and accurately gather additional information via web searches.

It's a skill.


As for using hamburger to make jerky, to my way of thinking that's more summer sausage strips, not really jerky...

[Tallpine]

I searched a web one time and all I found was a dead fly ....

[RadioFreeSeaLab]

So I think I'm going to try it first with my oven and some london broil.  Probably next weekend when I'm back in town.  Gotta go away for a couple days to visit the woman.

[Manedwolf]

This method of preparing dried meat has been observed in the 20th century in stone age tribes (using stone knives) discovered in the Amazon and New Guinea.

The same things were observed in stone age tribes in Australia and Africa when European explorers reached those areas in the 1500s through the 1700s.

Trying to rip the meat into strips is an almost impossible tasts. It's difficult to get it evenly thin enough to allow for proper drying.

Many, if not most stone-age cultures most certainly used stone tools, hence the name. Knapped obsidian knives are freaking SHARP. We had to do those in an anthropology class in college, to show how difficult it was to properly fracture the rock into a blade edge, and how much patience it took to do it right. (and bloody knuckles, too). Another group was making spears with various theoretical bindings and throwing them at a dead goat to see which actually held up to impact or affected flight characteristics. That was a fun class.

[K Frame]

"Knapped obsidian knives are freaking SHARP."

Hence my point.

Stone age cultures are perfectly well equipped to cut strips of meat.

Because of its molecular structure, obsidian edges can be made FAR sharper than steel edges, to the point where modified obsidian has been looked at as surgical instruments.

Properly knapping stone is difficult... at first. But as with everything, with practice you get a LOT faster and it's a lot easier.

[mfree]

"Knapped obsidian knives are freaking SHARP."

Hence my point.

Edgy.

[Paddy]

Making jerky out of hamburger seems yucky to me.  I always thought jerky was thin sliced dried beefsteak.

[Brad Johnson]

Making jerky out of hamburger seems yucky to me.  I always thought jerky was thin sliced dried beefsteak.

I was thinking the same thing.  Dried ground beef?  Something about that just sounds so wrong.

Brad

[ilbob]

a long time ago i tried to make some in an oven. i got some cheap steak of some sort and cut it into thin strips.

i soaked it overnight in lemon juice and soy sauce (don't laugh at me - thats what the recipe called for).

the next day I cooked it at the lowest setting in my oven for 2 hours per side as instructed.

it came out as hard, dark brown chunks of something that was inedible. have not tried since.

[Brad Johnson]

a long time ago i tried to make some in an oven. i got some cheap steak of some sort and cut it into thin strips.

i soaked it overnight in lemon juice and soy sauce (don't laugh at me - thats what the recipe called for).

the next day I cooked it at the lowest setting in my oven for 2 hours per side as instructed.

it came out as hard, dark brown chunks of something that was basically inedible. have not tried since.

Most residential ovens get way too hot, even on the lowest setting.  The result is exactly what you described - a partially cooked and completely dry chunk of what used to be decent beef.

Brad