Hi J! May I please put out a request to some of your cooking Freepers (it sort of fits into historic cooking a bit). My youngest loves jerky. She loves it to the point that if you offered her a candy bar OR jerky... she’d take the jerky each and every time. I recently purchased a dehydrator from Amazon (a decent one) but need some jerky tips/recipes. My concern is this: how do you know jerky is done because my concern is bacteria. Any advice/recipe/how to tips are greatly appreciated. (BTW... I don’t have access to anything exotic (I’m defining that as anything you can’t buy in the store like elk, deer, etc). Thank you, thank you, thank you. :)
Back in November, FReeper ‘Lurker’ gave me a jerky recipe .... here’s the post:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3603821/posts?page=18#18
This recipe was for venison & he said 6 hours @ 160. I would imagine the ingredients would work on beef, too. Maybe he could help you out with some of your questions (?)
Also, I did a quick “Bing” search for beef jerky recipes & here’s a link to one, using a dehydrator, that looks like it has good directions (dehydrator & oven) .... in the comments, it also appears to be ‘delicious’! Good luck!!
The BEST Beef Jerky
https://www.gimmesomeoven.com/beef-jerky/
“how do you know jerky is done because my concern is bacteria.”
Good question. When it’s done it should feel like leather. It’ll bend almost 90 degrees before it starts to break. To control bacteria I use 1/4 teaspoon of Prague Powder per each pound of meat.
It’s also called Prague #2 or Pink Salt, not Himalayan.
Available on the web.
Which dehydrator did you get? We use the Excalibur 5 tray model and love it. It’ll handle 4-5 pounds of meat, depending. Excellent quality.
L
Beef Jerky
Get a beef roast that is very lean. Slice it thin, about a quarter inch. Freezing it helps and I use an electric knife.
Dip the slices into a bowl of soy sauce and brown sugar. There’s no set recipe. You can leave them in the sauce a couple of minutes or a quick pass, it’s all the same.
Let the excess drip off and lay the pieces on the dehydrator rack. Sprinkle with pepper or not for your kiddo. I have an old 1970 Ronco model and have to put a cookie sheet under it to catch any drips.
Different models take different amounts of time to do their thing so can’t tell you that. I have to rotate and move the racks from top to bottom about three times through the process so everything gets done at the same time and it helps with the air circulation. It done when the meat is dry but still a wee bit flexible. There may be some spots that glisten but that’s from the warm sugar which will go away when you lay the jerky out for couple hours to cool before you bag it up.
The reason you don’t want pieces of fat in it is because that supposedly doesn’t dehydrate well. Psst, the fat is the best part! I haven’t died yet from homemade jerky.
Just got The Walking Dead cookbook. The jerky marinade looks pretty good. Let me know if you would like me to post it.
I still have the dehydrator my hubby, then fiancé, gave me for one Christmas. 39 years later and I still use it nearly every summer mostly to dry roma tomatoes. I made a lot of jerky - mostly turkey jerky. We used turkey tenderloins. slice them thin, if you freeze them first you can slice more easily and thinly. Also slice lengthwise so you are cutting with the grain. I marinated overnight with any kind of homemade thrown together marinade. I used soy sauce, maybe a splash of BBQ sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, pepper, whatever you like. Spray the racks with an oil spray, just not olive oil. Lay out the strips. Depending on the dehydrator I would go 5 or 6 hours, then flip and another 5 or 6 hours. You want it leathery not brittle. Take out the strips that are ready - they will not all be ready at the same time. Had no trouble with bacteria but then again I always kept it in the fridge in a ziploc.