/ck/ - Food & Cooking

I usually marinade it with light and dark soysauce, sugar, and parika + other stuff. Haven't gotten the god mix for me yet but the search continues.

Before I jerk my meat I massage it with blended kiwi then I soak it in a mixture of that kikkoman brand soysauce LOW SODIUM MIND YOU and teriyaki sauce (The liquidy shit not the thick shit) I then mince garlic by hand because fuck the canned stuff and throw that shit in too. Next I shred a fucking apple up and toss in a little of that. The sweeter the better. Get some citrus rind because yum. Now next a very small pinch of cinnamon which I put in EVERYTHING. Now grind some mother fucking ginger and toss that in too. Doesnt have a soul who cares. Freshly squeezed orange juice ads yum factor. Green onion too. Not the white onion though because fuck that. Then I let it sit for a week and a half and slice it up then dry it out. Woo for good food. And bad grammar because why not.

>>3935759
Well I seem to be the only one liking dry meat. in my family. I usually dry cooked meat chops and it tastes great. Like jerky, but with extra spice and a bone to lick on.

>>3935771
Oh yeah and a shit ton of sugar and brown sugar. Until the liquid cannot soak any more.

>>3935759
Which dehydrator did you get? After dropping $19.94 for 1lb of Fredricksburg beef jerky this weekend, I am determined to start making my own.

Tex-Mex beef jerky is coated with a mixture of salt, chili powder, and black pepper. The original purpose was to keep flies away while the meat was drying in the sun.

And some cowboys made soup from beans and chunks of pepper-coated dried beef and that's how chili con carne was invented.

>>3935781
I got an Oster brand dehydrator. My first go at it was a mixed bag, it seems. The banana slices came out excellent, if a little stuck in your teeth chewy. Good otherwise. The blueberries seemed to have both dried out and minorly exploded. They're just dried smears, but thankfully not messy ones. The blackberries, however, are just warm. They're no more dried out than when I put them in there 12 hours ago.

I knew a guy that would marinate it in some kind of teriyaki salad dressing he also made. He would just get steaks from the store and ask them to cut them into inch thick strips. Fucking good

Slice the meat paper thin.

>>3935759
>>3935771

Damn that sounds nice mang!

OP Pretty much you can marinate your meat with whatever flavor you like. If you're just starting out, Lawry's 30 minute marinades are a pretty decent simple way to get started without having to think too much about what you're putting into the marinade and will result in some pretty good jerky. You'll most likely need between 12-24 hours for a solid marinade, just FYI.

For meat, the cardinal rules are:

As lean a cut as you possibly can IE Top Round, Eye of Round, Flap Meat, Flank etc, trimmed of as much extra fat as you can.

Slice the Meat thin - No thicker than 1/4" thick otherwise it will take too long to dry. You can partially freeze the meat (not fully frozen) to make slicing easier if you don't have a meat slicer.

Since you have a dehydrator, set it to the maximum setting it can go. Usually this means 160 degrees or around that. That'll ensure the fastest drying time for your jerky and less chance for bad bacteria to form.

After cooking, simply bag it up and store it in a cool dry dark place or the fridge/freezer.

>>3936167
Why does everyone recommend the leanest cut possible? Mess in the dehydrator, or what?

>>3936174

Fat amigo. Fat. Simply put, because you're not actually "cooking" the meat, the fat in the meat is like a magnet for bad bacteria because of the higher moisture content present in fat vs muscle. The more fat in your jerky, the more tender it will be, but it will also spoil a heck of a lot quicker. It also will go rancid if exposed to too much sunlight, where the regular beef muscle tissue, will not. It's just more of a preventative measure more than anything else.

>>3936177

Plus dried fat, even when it's not going bad, tastes like ass IMHO. Just a personal preference really, and that's coming from a guy who makes my own Pancetta which I suppose is the one exception to that statement.

>>3936177
Is it difficult to get all the moisture out of the fat or something? Why would it spoil?

>>3936174
I dunno. I make pounds jerky and eat the whole thing in a week. That's not long enough for the fat to go bad. I like chewing the marinated fat.

>>3936191

Aye, well if you want the product to remain edible yes, it is. Essentially fat will retain more moisture than the muscle tissue. Thusly, if you truly wanted to create "dried fat", the muscle would have dried out much more by that point to the point it would be pretty inedible. I actually made that mistake once.

I forgot to turn off my Dehydrator (it unfortunately doesn't have a timer, just unplugs to shut off) and the meat dried so much that it became crumbly dried chipped beef, which consequently had barely any taste of the marinade or even of beef left. It tasted pretty nasty.

Drying is all about eliminating moisture which is what bacteria needs to thrive and to preserve fresh cuts of meat for longer periods of time.

Think of the concept of a patch of dirt in the middle of the Mojave desert and a patch of fetid swamp water. The swamp water is generally going to have more bacteria than arid burning hot dirt, it's just how bacteria thrives, with moisture.

>>3936201

True, in this sense, if you're not going to keep the meat for more than a week or so, or if it's going to be stored in the fridge or freezer, then rigorous fat removal isn't so important, but if your'e shipping Jerky to a friend, or planning to munch on it say for a 2 week long backpacking trip in the High Sierras, (John Muir Trail Represent!) then it becomes a lot more important.

>>3936191

> why would it spoil

Dude ,read it again.

>>3936216
Maybe you didn't see my first statement. I was unaware that fat would take much longer dehydrate, therefore I did not know it would contain more moisture after dehydration. I just wanted to be sure that moisture was the only consideration in fat spoilage.

bumping.
Building a food dehydrator and making jerky asap since I moved from jerkyland Alberta to planet Ausfag and can't find beef bubble gum anymore

>>3936242
>beef bubble gum

Amazing turn of phrase right there.

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=141876151&page=15

thread

cliffs
-read the fucking thread
-the shittier cuts of meat make the best jerky

>>3936242

Welp if you're kitbashing a dryer together, Alton Brown has a good one using furnace filters and box fans that do a pretty decent job! Let me see if I can dig up a link.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Box-Fan-Jerky/

There ya go!

>>3938165
Is that...safe? Isn't there like...fiberglass or some shit that could get on the meat?

I used left over potroast and brisket a few times, rubbing it with an standard herb mix and letting it soak in a weak marinade for a little while before drying.Potroast is by far my favorite, it dried the best for me.

>>3939009
From what I've seen about those kit bashing dryers, usually you wrap the meat in a layer of cheesecloth before putting them on the filters. Plus most of the filters nowadays are cloth or plastic, so it's pretty safe overall.

OP and 3936020 here, I used Alton Brown's recipe minus the weird air filter thing and using an actual food dehydrator and it came out amazing. Absolutely delicious. Oddly enough the picture makes them look really shiny and wet but they're bone dry.

>>3940887

Nice looking stuff there! Yeah that glistening stuff is actually rendered fat that got squeezed out of the meat as the muscle fibers contracted as they dried. Generally if you plan to store or ship jerky, you want to mop up those "wet" spots with a paper towel or something like that to remove the excess pooled fat so it won't attract bacteria.

Otherwise, good looking stuff! Hope you enjoy it. :)

>>3942237
>Nice looking stuff there!

It looks like dried cat turds.

>>3942273
oh god I'm still laughing at that comment...