spoonitnow AMA (and 10,000th post stuff)

[Lukie]

[beef jerky, post #27, blah blah meow chow]

Trip report cliffs notes: Jerky came out good, really not all that hard to make, and as with pretty much anything you do more than once, there are improvements to be made. Some should have been obvious; some not so much.

I actually had planned on going to the grocery store yesterday anyway. There were sales on sirloin roasts of some sort, and I found one in particular that was fairly small and looked to be exceptionally lean. I used that one for jerky.

Got home, put it in the freezer (to make it easier to cut into thin slices), although I didn't leave it in long enough. This combined with a sharp-enough-for-everything-else-but-not-sharp-enough-for-this knife, and some ill-advised cuts, and about half of the 'strips' actually came out to be more like 'chip' sized. Some were longer; all were probably a tad thick. Some cuts simply weren't going to be useable for jerky so I stirfried those separately instead. All in all, I estimate that I got about a pound of reasonable jerky strips that I put in a bag and marinated.

Marinade was 1/2 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup red devil hot sauce (vinegar based cayenne pepper sauce, similar to Frank's), a splash of liquid smoke, and a decent sprinking of garlic powder. Some notes about the marinade: I probably could have used more but I'm cheap, and I used regular soy sauce though in the future I will probably use reduced sodium. This is saying something because I usually try to avoid reduced-fat or reduced-sodium anything, and bacon should be made from pigs.. but I digress. The end product was tasty but a bit too salty for my liking.

The meat marinated for roughly 4 hours, then I put the meat directly on the oven rack with a foil lined baking sheet underneath. Due to the amateur cuts of meat, most of the pieces only made contact with 1 or 2 spokes, probably not ideal, and in the future I will do my best to make better cuts and/or hang them from toothpicks as recommended.

I set the oven to between warm-200, say 175, and propped open the door ever so slightly with a spoon. Pro tip: real men use metal spoons, not wooden spoons, for this type of endeavor. I checked back somewhat frequently and began eating some of the smaller pieces after about 4 hours. Most I let go for 6-7. In my estimation this amount could probably be cut in half or possibly more depending on the efficacy of the earlier steps.

All things considered I am very happy with how it turned out. I have always liked jerky except for the price and additives of most mass produced jerky, this came out tasty, and there is utility that is kind of unique to jerky.