Well, I'm out of sticks and jerky so you know what that means. Time to make some more. Going with ground beef jerky today. Using a tad over 5 pounds of 90/10 from Sam's Club and will be using the jerky gun I got for $15 when the local Gander Mountain closed as my extrusion method. Recipe is my go to one for ground beef jerky and "jerky rounds". I'm also going to use an aluminum pan I bought from Amazon to use as a drip pan in the bottom of the LEM dehydrator. Last time I made some with 80/20 and got a good bit of drippage and the normal foil lining did not do a good job of containing it so I bought a 14"x14" pan.
Recipe for this batch:
Day 2 is dehydrating day. I prepped the 10 tray LEM dehydrator. The aluminum pan is just a tad too wide to sit on the bottom alone and not quite wide enough for both sides to fit in a tray slot. So I ended up putting a dehydrator tray in the bottom position and setting the pan on top of that (the sides extend to the 2nd tray slots perfectly that way). I loose 2 tray position this way but if I find something as a spacer for the bottom I can cut that to only loosing the bottom tray rack in the future. Still 8 racks in this dehydrator is a lot of stuff and the tray is a perfect drip pan for easy clean up. This is the tray on Amazon:
5 pounds of jerky mix is 4 loads of the 1.5 pound Jerky Gun. Extruded in flat strips. I get about 1 tray and 2 strips per load. I'm also using silicone mesh mats on top of the trays.
Set the timer for 6 hours. Ran at 125* for about 1 1/2 hours to set the outside of the meat. Then cranked the LEM to full power (about 155*) and ran at that temp for the remainder of the time. Meat was done to my satisfactions at about the 5 hour 10 minute mark. Once cooled, cut in half and into plastic containers in the fridge for consumption!
Pretty tasty. I should have cut back on the black pepper a little. I ran out of pre-ground which is what I usually use and ended up grinding fresh which had considerably more kick than normal. I'm good with it, but not everyone likes that level of kick. So maybe 1 tsp of CBP?
Recipe for this batch:
- 5 pounds of 90% lean ground beef
- 12 ounces of Smoking Gun Jerky Marinade (commercial mix)
- 2 tsp crushed black pepper
- 2 tsp onion powder
- 3 tsp liquid hickory smoke
- 1 tsp of garlic powder
- 11.4 grams of Butcher & Packer #414 binder (phosphate binder)
- 5.67 grams of cure #1
- 5.6 grams of Jalapeno powder
Day 2 is dehydrating day. I prepped the 10 tray LEM dehydrator. The aluminum pan is just a tad too wide to sit on the bottom alone and not quite wide enough for both sides to fit in a tray slot. So I ended up putting a dehydrator tray in the bottom position and setting the pan on top of that (the sides extend to the 2nd tray slots perfectly that way). I loose 2 tray position this way but if I find something as a spacer for the bottom I can cut that to only loosing the bottom tray rack in the future. Still 8 racks in this dehydrator is a lot of stuff and the tray is a perfect drip pan for easy clean up. This is the tray on Amazon:
5 pounds of jerky mix is 4 loads of the 1.5 pound Jerky Gun. Extruded in flat strips. I get about 1 tray and 2 strips per load. I'm also using silicone mesh mats on top of the trays.
Set the timer for 6 hours. Ran at 125* for about 1 1/2 hours to set the outside of the meat. Then cranked the LEM to full power (about 155*) and ran at that temp for the remainder of the time. Meat was done to my satisfactions at about the 5 hour 10 minute mark. Once cooled, cut in half and into plastic containers in the fridge for consumption!
Pretty tasty. I should have cut back on the black pepper a little. I ran out of pre-ground which is what I usually use and ended up grinding fresh which had considerably more kick than normal. I'm good with it, but not everyone likes that level of kick. So maybe 1 tsp of CBP?
