Posted: 10/4/2004 9:25:13 AM EDT
|
Does anyone have any good Venison Jerkey Recipes? The store bought ones are too salty for my family. Thank you for your input |
Here is one for beef jerkey. Thanks to my buddy @ work for this one  ------------------------------------------------------------ Best Ever Beef Jerkey Recipe (Risk free and very repeatable) Utensils / Equipment: - Smoker - charcoal (about 2 1/2 quarts of briquettes) - Mesquite (or Hickory) (large handful) - 1' x 1' Aluminum foil - 1/2 gallon V8 juice can - Refrigerator - oven or dehydrator used to finish drying if necessary (120 deg max) - 1' x 2' pan - 1 gallon or bigger container that will fit in fridge and can be sealed airtight (tupperware or big jar) - 1 coffee cup - whole fresh chicken egg, unbroken, uncracked, clean on outside. This will be used only as hydrometer, and can be eaten independant of this recipe. Ingredients: - sugar - salt - 1 TBSP soy sauce - 1/4 cup minced onion or 1 Tablespoon onion powder - 1 Tblspn garlic powder or 3 clove minced garlic - black pepper (about 2 teaspoon) - 1-2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional) (or spritz OC gas) Note 1 teaspoon produces gentle warmth to flavor and 2 teaspoons begins to get hot - 3 is right out - Juice + seeds from 1 large lemon - 4#Beef: best use lean cut such as rump roast. Fat tends to spoil easily. The meat should be sliced into strips no thinner than 3/16" and no thicker than 5/16". When the meat dries, it cracks parallel to the grain of the meat, so it's important to cut the strips with grain running parallel to the longest dimension of the strip, otherwise the meat could fall off the rack in the smoker as it dries and become charcoal. Process: (this sounds complicated but it's easy to do) 1) Put Soy sauce in coffee cup. Add garlic, onion. Add lemon juice. Place cup in fridge. This will allow flavor to leach out of the onions while rest of solution gets prepared. 2) Get a quart of water, and gently set the chicken egg in it. You'll notice it will sink to the bottom. Remove the egg and dissolve 1/2 cup of sugar in it. Gently put the egg back into the solution. It will sink again but slower because the solution is becoming more dense. Remove the egg. Add sugar to the solution a Tablespoon at a time, making sure all sugar gets dissolved between additions, and repeatedly set and remove the egg to test density. Stop adding sugar when egg can float. Pour this sugar-water into the 1-2 gallon container. 3) Prepare a salt solution using the egg exactly like previous step. Start with 1/4 cup of salt and 1 quart of water, adding salt till egg can float. Pour final solution into container. 4) Add contents of coffee cup to container. Add cayenne to container, and mix thoroughly. 5) Put strips of meat into container one at a time making sure they get thoroughly wetted by the solution, and make sure the meat is arranged such that the solution covers all meat. Sprinkle 1 teaspoon of black pepper over top of solution. Seal container and place in fridge of 12-24 hours, shuffling meat every 6 hours. Idea is to keep it cold, minimize air exposure, and agitate solution periodically. 6) Get fire going and ready for meat (see smoker setup) 7) Remove meat from fridge, and pour off solution leaving meat in container. You will notice the solution has thickened as serums have been leached out of the meat, making it preservable. Rinse meat by adding 1 quart of water to the container, slushing the meat around for 15 seconds and pouring off. 8) Immediately arrange the meat on the grill in the smoker by draping each piece over one rung such that the ends hang down and dont touch other pieces. This is so smoke can circulate and cover entire surface of meat. Sprinkle black pepper all over meat (to taste) (about 1 teaspoon is good starting point) and put lid on smoker. Place foil pillow on top of can and close smoker door. Watch pepper dust else sneezing results. 9) Allow smoking to continue until fire burns completely out, checking every hour to make sure meat strips aren't sticking to each other. Temperature under no crcumstances should be allowed to exceed 150 degrees F at any point in the smoking process. or flavor will be degraded. 10) Remove meat from smoker and place in pan, distributed so they can dry completely either in hot sun on a dry day or in oven or dehydrator. Drying temperature should not exceed 120 degrees and should have plenty of air flow. Jerkey can be tasted at this point. 11) Store jerkey in large air-tight container with two cups of raw popcorn thrown in. This will help keep jerky dry as well as moisten popcorn which makes it pop fluffier. Smoker Preparation: (have fire safety under control) 1) get a 1/2 gallon V8 juice can with both ends cut out, placed on lowest level in smoker upright. Fill bottom half of can with charcoal and wet with charcoal lighter. Ignite, and immediately fill top half with dry charcoal such that the burning fluid will slowly ignite the top charcoal. This low use of fluid minimizes carcinogenic content of smoke - if paranoid, use methanol as fluid. 2) Prepare a foil pillow containing hickory or mesquite that is tightly pinched to seal air. It should be about 6" x 6" and should be shaped so it can sit on top of the V8 can eventually. Do not put it in until the meat is on the grill and the lid is on. 3) When charcol lighter fluid has completely burned, fire is ready for meat. Place grill on highest level in smoker with mid level vacant. 4) During smoking operation, check hourly to be sure ashes haven't blocked air passage entering V8 can. |