Making Beef Jerky In an Oven

[Totumpole]

i just made my 1st batch of oven jerky today mighty impressed but alas the smoke has allured me and i dont recolect seeing liquid stuff in shops - would them hickory chips in a tray on the oven floor work?

you can get "liquid smoke" flavour in the shops, A friend brought me some back from from Texas. Just type in liquid smoke into google shopping.

 

[Totumpole]

you can get "liquid smoke" flavour in the shops, A friend brought me some back from from Texas. Just type in liquid smoke into google shopping.

I'm note sure if the hickory chips would work, not sure how great they would be for the oven (or smoke detectors) as well. Ive only seen it in a few deli's that stock american sauces. Failing that ebay will no doubt have someone selling it, or as I said before search it in google and look in google shopping.

 

[shamal]

try these different variations

http://www.socal.co.uk/BBQ_Accessories/Sauces_And_Rubs/Stubbs/Stubbs_Hickory_Liquid_Smoke/294/17197

 

[tree beard]

I love the stuff and this thread has spurred me on to try and make some, so . . . . I've cut the beef into thin strips and tonight it's gone into a bowl with . . . . chilli flakes, a bit of chilli dipping oil, salt, pepper, balsamic vinegar, garlic, a splash of lime juice and Hendersons relish (I am from Sheffield), a bit of fresh rosemary, sage and thyme.
I will be drying it in an oven (electric) so wish me luck, (any tips are welcome )

Regards,
Tree beard.

 

[nokia_aid]

iv tried the jerky they have in asda and it was nasty stuff,i just went on that website and bought some,hopefully it will be good then i might give making my own a go

 

[Bushwhacker]

Ask the Dartmoor lot whether they liked mine or not. I hope I wasn't being humoured!

 

[Retired Member southey]

Hers a good place for sauces, and local to me OH YEAH BABY!

American candy store

 

[Robson Valley]

Everybody with access to a kitchen oven should be making some style of dried meat. It's that easy.
The real quest is for a marinade/seasoning that you really like.

In the furtrading days of the Hudson's Bay Company, pemmican was the fur trader's main ingredient in "Burgoo."
Very little pemmican was eaten in the fur trading posts, themselves.

According to HBC archives, the annual pemmican quota for the Rocky Mountain House trading post was 44,000lbs. Done in 9 days.

 

[Charlz9mm]

Yes, that's right. Some early explorers in the U.S. died because they took large quantities of lean meat with them not knowing the importance of fat. If you increase the amount of protein in the diet, you also need to increase the amount of fat to help with its metabolization or you get depleted in vitamin A, which is very dangerous.

Whites had to learn the proper thing to do from the Indians. Now it seems we have to learn such things all over again with the current stupidity over low-fat diets. U.S. dietary guidelines are effectively based on the economic needs of American agribusiness (which grows and processes acre upon acre of maize ("Indian corn")) and British guidelines are based on U.S. ones, and here we are ...

In point of fact, it's not fat in the diet that's the problem (apart from unnatural synthesized vegetable fats marketed by agribusiness) but sugar. That's what responsible for the obesity epidemic (and a lot of other health problems) as explained here by Pobert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

A must watch for anyone who's got kids, and a searing indictment of the American food industry.



I'm not sure that they add much in that way, but they were certainly put in for the flavour, and they may have tended to help preservation:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kFOw3koWpJ0C

Important from the point of view of vitamins would be the fat-soluble ones (particularly A and D), which were in the added fat. Fat is also important for a number of other biological functions. It was found the past that pemmican was the only concentrated food on which men can actually live and work for extended periods.

In general, you can -- sorry conventional "wisdom" -- survive on a totally carnivorous diet, and several peoples did for at least part of the year. However, you do need to know which parts of the carcass to eat (e.g., marrow, adrenal glands for vitamin C), you have to eat some of it raw, and above all you need to eat plenty of the fat.

Myra Shackley in Using Environmental Archaeology is very interesting on this.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0713448504/

We know from ethnographic accounts that North American Indians would preferentially use the carcasses of older male animals, because of the greater quantity of fat on them. Often leaner carcasses would simply be abandoned on site. They would also sometimes remove only the cuts high in fat -- liver, tongue, etc. and abandon the rest of the carcass. Archaeological evidence, such as that from the Garsney Bison Kill site in Canada, shows us the same thing:

http://books.google.com/books?id=Z7XGFSp3drkC&pg=114

This stuff you hear about primitive peoples' using everything on a carcass is a load of bull from ill-informed people who project modern Western obsessions onto them. Hunter-gatherers may have had a use for all parts of an animal; but they didn't always use them. It's modernized resource-starved societies that worry about "waste" -- hence Samuel Hearne's strictures on the "wastefulness" of the Canadian Indians.

This is highly informative on the general diet of North American Indians:

http://www.trit.us/traditional_diets/native_americans.html

Anyway, to return to pemmican -- it was, and remains, the perfect concentrated food, but it could go off. The women used to ram it down with sticks in parfleches (and even jump on the parfleches) to try to exclude the air. It was a hit-and-miss affair, but if it worked, it would keep for a long time.

This is correct on every level; history, fat, sugar, etc. Well done sir. Pemmican is still made and consumed here in the states in certain areas.
Beef Jerky that is sold here is drenched in sugar and is far too lean to be healthy. I would add as an aside note that the "American diet" is highly spiked with the industrial toxin called high fructose corn syrup. It is injected into everything. Coca Cola that is made in Mexico does not contain High Fructose Corn Syrup, but rather actual cane sugar. It is preferred by Mexicans residing here and can be purchased in specialty shops. The ingredients and labeling are written in Spanish. Anyway there are some excellent Pemmican producers here and even some organic (although pricey) that can be purchased.

 

[Insel Affen]

Mine never makes it onto any trips 😢

Gets made, me, kids and dog eats it YUMMY

 

[Robson Valley]

All the more reason to research the cures and spice/herb mixes so you can make jerky and call it your own and you know exactly what's in it.
I buy, on average, one side of 2yr old bison every year. Steaks, roasts and the rest is burger as I describe to the butcher.
Here's what I do:
Thaw 3lbs burger. I mix two kinds of High Mountain seasoning, the pepper one alone is too hot for my liking.
Put on a disposable plastic glove and mix the cure, seasoning and burger together.
There's a trick:
You know how burger has a granular/crumbly appearance? Well, keep mixing by hand and you will both see and feel the texture
of meat change from granular to fibrous = that's what's going to hold it together.
With the flat tip on the Cabela's Jerky Pistol, 1lb is about a full load. I slowly squirt that out as a 3/4" ribbon on a big mesh
cake rack. I'll see 15-17' of product. Into the slow oven for several hours and done!

Next, I'll freeze what I don't need immediately. Over time, water migrates from the jerky, forming ice crystals in the bag.
This dries the meat even further.
I've nevr weighted the finished jerky but I'll guess that 3lbs burger gives me maybe 8-10oz of exactly the jerky that I like.
Yet to see anyone spit it out.

 

[LiveAndrew]

I've used a dehydrator to make jerky. I bought it for drying mushrooms and it's an excellent piece of kit. Only about £30 on amazon.

 

[Robson Valley]

Agreed, LA. A food dehydrator will work well. I've got an "American Harvest" model, temp control, thermostat and all. Never thought to do jerky. But I use it mostly to dry Roma tomatoes, sliced in halves, at about 55C then pack them in herbed olive oil (you looked at the price of that stuff in the store?).
The mushrooms: are they hard to rehydrate?

 

[LiveAndrew]

Your dehydrator sounds similar to mine (thermostat, timer). Mushrooms are dead easy to dry. Just slice them thin and dry at 35C for at least 6 hours. I normally gather and dry porcini.

Here's the recipe I used for the jerky:

* 600g beef rump steak
* 1/2 cup Soy sauce
* 1/2 cup Teriyaki sauce
* 1/2 cup Worcester sauce
* 1/2 cup Cholula Chipotle Hot sauce
* 1 tsp garlic salt
* 1 tsp onion salt
* 1 tsp course ground black pepper
* 2 tsp dark muscovado sugar
* 1 tsp black treacle

1) Remove all fat from the beef.
2) Slice the beef as thin as you can (max 1/4 inch thick)
3) Combine all ingredients (except the beef) in a plastic food bag and shake well to combine.
4) Add the beef to the bag, seal and store in the fridge for 24 hours.
5) Remove the beef from the bag and drain in a sieve for 15 minutes.
6) Lay the beef strips on your drying racks and dry for about 7 hours at 50C.

 

[Robson Valley]

Yum. Just made notes, something to try. I'll slice the meat semi frozen. Thinner and easier to do.
The nice things about bison is that like all big game, there's practically no fat in the meat. And, the burger means far less chewing.
Mix everything, load the pistol, squirt it onto the rack and dry. Do the next one.

In the Home & Cabin section of Cabela's online catalog, The things I use are in the jerky making section. You can see what the "pistol" looks like,
it works really well and it's fast. I mixed the HiMountain Original Blend with the Cracked Black Pepper & Garlic blend (too hot) 50/50. Just the hint of heat now.

 

[LiveAndrew]

There's no chance of getting bison in the shops down here, but you're right as having no fat in the meat is very important as fat doesn't dry easily and if it's not dry it'll spoil quicker. I'm assuming deer would work well for the same reason.

I had to look up a jerky gun and it looks just like a mastic gun! Nice idea, but I think I prefer cutting the meat - you are right that cutting frozen beef is easier.

 

[Robson Valley]

The bison ranch is just 10 minutes across the village from my house. Cut by cut, the prices are astronomical.
I buy a side, 2 yrs old. Actually, I don't need to see it until I visit the butcher shop.
Started buying back in 2001 I think it was. About 1 side per year. When the mud freezes in the farm yard in November,
time to go shopping. Price is up this year, it worked out to about $4.50/lb, cut, wrapped, labelled and quick frozen.

Venison/deer will be every bit as good. I get some from my neighbor, he's a very efficient hunter. House full of antlers.
As pepperoni and Farmer sausage, a real treat to trade for bison.

Back to the point. Everybody should make an effort to make jerky. LiveAndrew's recipe looks really appealing.

 

[Rabid]

I make my own biltong and love it, i always take it when i go into the woods

 

[Goosegog]

I make my own but i add a little of my home made mushroom ketchup ( smalls and tastes like worcester sauce, and the remaining power is great in everything)
Here's a link for a guy on youtube that shows traditional food methods....
[video=youtube;29u_FejNuks]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29u_FejNuks[/video]