Post by greensheepuk on Mar 28, 2013 18:57:12 GMT
Hi All,
I've been making beef jerky on and off for a couple of years and seeing as I'm just about to make my first batch of the year I thought I'd document it for the forum.
You need to use a cut of beef that's low in fat for jerky because fat won't dry like the meat will and if stored for long enough will go rancid. The cut you use depends on your budget, mine is tight! So I usually use a topside/silverside joint or occasionally a thick rib. The was a morrisons vac packed joint which are on offer at the min. You cant see much when they're packaged but I could tell that the joint had little sign of fat/sinue on the inside and the fat on the outside could be easily trimmed.
With the beef trimmed (and 250g lighter) it's ready to slice.
You can see that this joint has very coarse fibers running from one end of the joint to the other. Now if you cut directly accross the fibers when slicing you'll end up with a jerky thats easy to bite bits off and relatively quick to crumble while eating but not particularly chewy. If you slice with the fibers then you get jerky thats almost impossible to take a clean bite through but is very chewy and you can strip it down a bit at a time. It's all down to personal preference how you slice it. I like my jerky quite chewy so you can see here that I'm not slicing totally with the fibers, I've just angled it out slightly.
All done, that slicer is worth it's weight in gold! lol.
Again coming back to preference, there are a thousand styles of jerky but my favourite uses the above ingredients. It's gives jerky that's 'spicy sweet' not really hot or infact strongly flavoured in any aspect, just right in all. And very moreish! (I missed the molasses out of this pic). The only ingredient that's not exactly easy to come by in the pic is the liquid smoke, but it is absolutely essential. You can get it on ebay, I usually buy 2-3 bottles at a time to reduce the impact of postage. I've used Hickory and Mesquite, this time it's mesquite.
Everything mixed in a blender and added to the marinating dish. It's wise to press the molasses through a sieve before mixing as even after blending there are usually lumps left if you don't.
Mixed and ready for a 12-18 hour marinate in the fridge with a couple of mixes along the way.
The next few pics are my dehydrator which i made a couple of years ago, not my most aesthetic creation but it does the job perfectly!
So it's a wooded box with a 1KW ceramic/infra-red heating element mounted in the bottom. The element has a polished stainless reflector underneath which protects the bottom/sides of the box from too much heat. You can also see some circular air inlets in addition to the inlet below the heating element.
Then I suspend a hacked baking tray a few inches above the element. This protects the element from drips of moisture from the food (as you can see!) And acts as a radiator/diffuser to protect the food from too much direct heat and improve air flow around the box.
I have six trays, each of which has a non-stick cooling rack (come dehydrator tray!). I use these when drying fruit. I used to use them for jerky too but am trying something different this time.
I'm going to leave all the trays out...
Apart from the top one and suspend the jerky pieces from this with some unbent paper clips which I saw someone do on youtube. This should give me better airflow and hopefully reduce the amount of work I have to do during the drying process in changing the order of the trays bottom to top etc.
The controller I use is actually meant for a freezer and is supposed to turn a condenser on when the temperature gets too warm but I've reversed the output so it turns my heater on when it gets too cold. I have a temperature probe (not on the photos) that I can put in the lid or on one of the trays to measure the internal temperature.
Here's the whole thing together. I have an old computer fan on the top to draw cold/dry air in the bottom, through the food and out the top as warm/moist air. It's powered by a 12V adapter under the base that I can adjust so i can adjust its speed. Too slow and the food will take too long to dry, too fast and the the heating element will be on far more than it needs to be in order to maintain the drying temperature. I'm usally on 4.5-6V.
That's it for now, the beef is in the fridge and the dehydrator is in the garage for an hour or two to make sure its dried out and working properly after the winter.
More to come tomorrow, JK.
P.s. I'll post the marinade recipe if anyone's interested, let me know.
I've been making beef jerky on and off for a couple of years and seeing as I'm just about to make my first batch of the year I thought I'd document it for the forum.
You need to use a cut of beef that's low in fat for jerky because fat won't dry like the meat will and if stored for long enough will go rancid. The cut you use depends on your budget, mine is tight! So I usually use a topside/silverside joint or occasionally a thick rib. The was a morrisons vac packed joint which are on offer at the min. You cant see much when they're packaged but I could tell that the joint had little sign of fat/sinue on the inside and the fat on the outside could be easily trimmed.
With the beef trimmed (and 250g lighter) it's ready to slice.
You can see that this joint has very coarse fibers running from one end of the joint to the other. Now if you cut directly accross the fibers when slicing you'll end up with a jerky thats easy to bite bits off and relatively quick to crumble while eating but not particularly chewy. If you slice with the fibers then you get jerky thats almost impossible to take a clean bite through but is very chewy and you can strip it down a bit at a time. It's all down to personal preference how you slice it. I like my jerky quite chewy so you can see here that I'm not slicing totally with the fibers, I've just angled it out slightly.
All done, that slicer is worth it's weight in gold! lol.
Again coming back to preference, there are a thousand styles of jerky but my favourite uses the above ingredients. It's gives jerky that's 'spicy sweet' not really hot or infact strongly flavoured in any aspect, just right in all. And very moreish! (I missed the molasses out of this pic). The only ingredient that's not exactly easy to come by in the pic is the liquid smoke, but it is absolutely essential. You can get it on ebay, I usually buy 2-3 bottles at a time to reduce the impact of postage. I've used Hickory and Mesquite, this time it's mesquite.
Everything mixed in a blender and added to the marinating dish. It's wise to press the molasses through a sieve before mixing as even after blending there are usually lumps left if you don't.
Mixed and ready for a 12-18 hour marinate in the fridge with a couple of mixes along the way.
The next few pics are my dehydrator which i made a couple of years ago, not my most aesthetic creation but it does the job perfectly!
So it's a wooded box with a 1KW ceramic/infra-red heating element mounted in the bottom. The element has a polished stainless reflector underneath which protects the bottom/sides of the box from too much heat. You can also see some circular air inlets in addition to the inlet below the heating element.
Then I suspend a hacked baking tray a few inches above the element. This protects the element from drips of moisture from the food (as you can see!) And acts as a radiator/diffuser to protect the food from too much direct heat and improve air flow around the box.
I have six trays, each of which has a non-stick cooling rack (come dehydrator tray!). I use these when drying fruit. I used to use them for jerky too but am trying something different this time.
I'm going to leave all the trays out...
Apart from the top one and suspend the jerky pieces from this with some unbent paper clips which I saw someone do on youtube. This should give me better airflow and hopefully reduce the amount of work I have to do during the drying process in changing the order of the trays bottom to top etc.
The controller I use is actually meant for a freezer and is supposed to turn a condenser on when the temperature gets too warm but I've reversed the output so it turns my heater on when it gets too cold. I have a temperature probe (not on the photos) that I can put in the lid or on one of the trays to measure the internal temperature.
Here's the whole thing together. I have an old computer fan on the top to draw cold/dry air in the bottom, through the food and out the top as warm/moist air. It's powered by a 12V adapter under the base that I can adjust so i can adjust its speed. Too slow and the food will take too long to dry, too fast and the the heating element will be on far more than it needs to be in order to maintain the drying temperature. I'm usally on 4.5-6V.
That's it for now, the beef is in the fridge and the dehydrator is in the garage for an hour or two to make sure its dried out and working properly after the winter.
More to come tomorrow, JK.
P.s. I'll post the marinade recipe if anyone's interested, let me know.
