Hi everybody, I have a venison hind quarter thawing in my fridge right now and will be picking up a pack of the Hi Mountain Jerky Seasoning either tonight or tomorrow night. I just want to run my plan by everybody to get a little feedback before i get too far into this. I got a MES 40 for Christmas and other than seasoning this will be my first run in it and my first run making jerky in a smoker.
My current plan is to slice up the meat and season according to the Hi Mountain instructions. This kit uses a dry cure, so I will let it cure for 24 hours per the instructions. Once cured I plan to hang the meat on skewers in the smoker. This is where I run into a few questions. The instructions say to smoke at 200* for 2 hours. After reading through a lot of the posts here I am thinking about changing this a little. I am thinking about running it at 170* for 1 hour with no smoke to cook out a lot of the moisture and then adding wood to smoke until it is dried to my liking. Since it is thin strips of jerky I know there is pretty much no way to test the IT of it. Does this sounds like a decent plan or should I maybe go a little cooler or even a little hotter?
Also, I am probably going to do two small runs since I have about 10 gallons of pieces of apple wood and about 5 gallons a peach wood and will try a run with each to see if I notice a difference or if one is better than the other. The peach is a trunk from a tree that is about 4-6 inches in diameter and the apple ranges from thumb sized pieces to stuff about 3 inches in diameter. The smaller pieces I am thinking to just add in as is. The bigger stuff, should I split down to thumb sized as well or go smaller? Does it make a difference in flavor if I leave the bark on?
I have also read about varying temperatures throughout the smoker and saw someone mention putting a baking pan at the bottom will help even out the heat. Will that work, I could also use that as my drip tray?
My current plan is to slice up the meat and season according to the Hi Mountain instructions. This kit uses a dry cure, so I will let it cure for 24 hours per the instructions. Once cured I plan to hang the meat on skewers in the smoker. This is where I run into a few questions. The instructions say to smoke at 200* for 2 hours. After reading through a lot of the posts here I am thinking about changing this a little. I am thinking about running it at 170* for 1 hour with no smoke to cook out a lot of the moisture and then adding wood to smoke until it is dried to my liking. Since it is thin strips of jerky I know there is pretty much no way to test the IT of it. Does this sounds like a decent plan or should I maybe go a little cooler or even a little hotter?
Also, I am probably going to do two small runs since I have about 10 gallons of pieces of apple wood and about 5 gallons a peach wood and will try a run with each to see if I notice a difference or if one is better than the other. The peach is a trunk from a tree that is about 4-6 inches in diameter and the apple ranges from thumb sized pieces to stuff about 3 inches in diameter. The smaller pieces I am thinking to just add in as is. The bigger stuff, should I split down to thumb sized as well or go smaller? Does it make a difference in flavor if I leave the bark on?
I have also read about varying temperatures throughout the smoker and saw someone mention putting a baking pan at the bottom will help even out the heat. Will that work, I could also use that as my drip tray?
