Am I about to make Jerky or am I just cooking steak low?

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Just saw your marinade post.

Some local grocery stores and sporting good stores carry cure. If you can find some locally you could cure this batch and carry on. Amazon might even have 1 day delivery depending on your life cation.

All I could find locally is some Pro-Cure.

That stuff is killer in Shrimp or Mullet flavor. I end up using the Inshore flavor though mostly.
 
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I didn't even know that was a thing.
Cure #1, also known as curing salt, instacure #1, pink curing salt is available on the shelf at Academy Sports or online at many retailers...
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Well we are smoki...I mean dehydrating! They are currently in the basket @ 160 degrees for 4 hours. Will check around 9pm or so to see how they look and feel.
 
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I actually just throttled it back to 145 degrees. I feel like my oven was pretty hot @ 160 degrees. We have 3 hours left.
 
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Well we got something


Wife told me I had to give up the oven around 3 hours and 40 minutes. She wanted some cookies before going to bed. Anyways they are pretty much done and I have them sweating in a bag now (I read this was a key part for them being tender).

Prior to this I tried some and I would give my first jerky project a B-

What I like:

Texture and thickness. Really happy about that. Any thinner and it would be chips and had I left them in the rest of the time I think they would have been perfect. Really happy overall though

What I don't like:

Fat...Oh man you just chew and chew and chew and it doesn't go anywhere. Not a fan at all!

Flavor...It's OK but I'm really not a W sauce guy and I put too much of it on there. I'd like to lean more garlic and maybe Asian next time


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I've made a lot of jerky of the years so allow me to toss in my 2 cents worth. Use a cut of beef that's lean and almost has no fat at all. Fat can easily go rancid and ruin the jerky. Use an eye of round, top round, bottom round or anything very lean. I like to slice my jerky thin so my drying techniques are different. Sometime i've used a cure and lot of times i have not. I think it comes down the thickness and drying rates. I've dried jerky in a smoker, oven and even in front of my wood stove with a fan on. You arent "cooking" the meat, you are removing moisture so that bacteria cant grow. If you remove moisture fast enough then you dont need a cure, plus it really depends on how long you plan to store it and where. I typically store mine in the fridge and it doesnt last more than a couple weeks. Dont forget, jerky has been made for centuries and they didnt have cure or refrigeration, they'd slice thin pieces of meat and place it in the sun to dry. Plus, if your marinade has salt in it, that's anti-bacterial to a point.
 
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