I had a number of customers ask me about jerky. I like jerky. Never made it before but thought I should give it a go. Well as you may have noticed from the fb page, it came out delicious. I’ve made 2 batches so far. The first one, I did almost everything wrong but the jerky came out amazing. The second batch which I have documented here for you, I made much better but the results were not quite as amazing. Perhaps it was an initial wow factor the first time. And over salting. I love salt.
At first I thought. Hey I can make this for our customers, that would be great! Then with further research I learned this is not allowed as jerky is a higher risk food to prepare and is very strictly regulated.
I have since found a processor that can make it for us, however, I realized some of you out there may be gung-ho enough to try it yourselves. We do sell lovely roasts for the DIY jerky maker.
So here we go.
The recommended roast for jerky making is round roast. They are lean and easier to cut up. You want your jerky pieces to be lean.
Fully defrost your roast, unwrap, cut binding strings and get a sharp knife handy. This cutting of the jerky slices is the hardest most time consuming part. Most sites will recommend cutting along the grain. But some say otherwise. You do what works for you.
Continue cutting lean, thin, jerky sized pieces till the roast is all cut up. I got about 3 lbs out of a 4 lb roast.
Now it’s time to marinate.
I split my cutlets into 4 piles that fit into sandwich ziplock bags. Then proceeded to fill with seasoning of my choice. This time I used the leftover teriyaki sauce my girlfriend gave me, franks red hot, a sandals jerk sauce and our fave BBQ sauce for the kiddos.
I add enough sauce so all the meat is coated, then suck out the air and zip the bag. This will marinate in the fridge for at least 24 hours. With the occasional squishing around to ensure good coverage.
After marinating, I gentle remove extra sauce with my fingers, line them up in my dehydrator and turn it on. Oh, do not leave the dehydrator door open while laying the meat on the trays, your cats may make a fine meal of them. Argh!
Then in 6-10 hours, the jerky will be good n dry and ready to store in jars.
A great snack to take along in a hurry or on a hike. Savoury and nutritious whole food protein goodness.
If anyone wants to give it a try, come on by and grab a roast, let me know how it goes. And if that’s not for you, it may be a while but we’ll get some properly made for you too!
Featherstone Farm 