Dry Cured Jerked Beef

[thirdeye]

Yesterday I smoke dried a couple of batches of jerky in my Big Chief box smoker. Because it's thin, the dry cure time is only 25 to 30 hours, and for flavor I used some homemade garlic pepper seasoning.





I'm using pecan pellets from A-Maze-N, and for me.... they work much better than sawdust or wood chips.



Smoke time is about 4 hours, the first hour I block the lid open to slowly start the drying process, then I adjust the gap as needed for the rest of the drying. A Big Chief has no actual controls for heat so about once an hour I'll add a handful of pellets but I never empty the ashes. This helps to control the combustion and keeps the smoke lighter.



Here is the end result.

 

[kilo charlie]

Looks delicious! Good tip on using the pellets !

 

[thirdeye]

Looks delicious! Good tip on using the pellets !

My Big Chief is from the '80's and flavor pellets were not an option back then, but they sold both fine and coarse flavor wood chips (and still do). The first time I tried flavor pellets I was hooked.

 

[smokerjim]

looks great!

 

[BGKYSmoker]

Looks good.

Over the weekend i had some dry cured bison jerky, it was awesome.

 

[BGKYSmoker]

My Big Chief is from the '80's and flavor pellets were not an option back then, but they sold both fine and coarse flavor wood chips (and still do). The first time I tried flavor pellets I was hooked.

I gave my son my old little chief from 1974. Still works.

 

[SmokinEdge]

Yup looks great! Makes me want a beef snack.

 

[thirdeye]

I gave my son my old little chief from 1974. Still works.

The only issues I have ever heard about are checking the female end of the power cord before each use for any heat damage and to make sure it's fully plugged in, but that is a common sense kind of thing for any outdoor electric smoker.