Quick Summary of Jerky Posts


 
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Scott Schaeffer

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I have been looking over a lot of posts about Jerky on this site as well as Stogie's page. I just wanted to review a few things before I throw my first run at jerky on the WSM tomorrow. Here is what I have gathered. Let me know if anything is missing.

1) Smoke for a few hours trying to stay b/w 160 and 170. Anything over 200 cooks the meat and that defeats the purpose.

2) Do not use water. A dry water pan works best, but lined for easy clean up.

3) Minion Method with a half of a ring with 10 lit briquettes works best for temp control.

4) Unfortunately I am using the toothpick method. I am going to rotate the meat from the outside to the inside part way through the cook so that the meat dries evenly.

5) Thin strips of meat take in a lot of smoke. Adding a light wood like apple for about an hour is about enough smoke. I plan to use one fist sized chunk and take out the remains after an hour.

Let me know if there is anything else I need to know or any other last minute tips and tricks.

Thanks in advance.
 
Scott....

I just cut up 30 lbs. of jerky Monday....had to take the day off! Our local market had bottom round on sale for $1.65/lb. Not the best cut of meat and there is a fair amount of waste, but for that price I bought 2 of the whole rounds.

Your smoking time will totally depend on how thick your strips are. All the butchers in my area have gone to cutting my meat on their band saws...no more deli slicers to be used for raw meat. Subsequently the slices come out between 1/4 - 3/8"....much thicker than I prefer. At 160?, my last several cooks have taken in excess of 14 hrs.!

I have to cook these up on Friday so I will increase my temps slightly to 170?. Though the product comes out better with lower heat, I have to also balance the time involved...hence the higher heat.

One last thing, if you can keep all the strips directly above the empty water pan, you will not need to rotate them. However, if you have some strips that hang outside the perimeter of the water pan, you will need to rotate those.

Good luck!
 
Scott,

Half a ring may be too much, I've done a batch of jerky each weekend for the past 3 weekends and have been using about 35 unlit and 10 lit and still have had trouble staying under 170 at times...jerky definitly takes alot more babysitting that something like a chuck roll but the results have been great thanks to Stogie's directions /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif
 
Thanks guys!

It's times like these that I really get sick of making jerky! I got them marinating...1/2 using the regular recipe and 1/2 using LOTS of my hab powder.

I'll need both smokers to be fired up again Friday and I fear another looooong cook as these things are once again thick.

I just have to keep my eye on the end product......looking forward to burning some of my friends A$$'s for challenging me to make some hot stuff for them! LOL
 
Thanks for the helpful hints. I used some of the hi mountain cures and it turned out great for my first shot at making jerky.

Chris - maybe a Jerky Page and a Buckboard page could be in the works for June? There is just a ton of stuff scattered throughout the forum.
 
Where can you find Tender Quick? And also, would a Brinkman water pan almost eliminate rotating the beef via the toothpick/pain in the a$$ method?
 
Walmart, spice aisle, bottom shelf, under the salt.

I don't think the little bit of extra diameter of the Brinkmann pan is going to make all that much difference to pieces hanging at the outer edges.
 
Brandon....

Doug is right on! I have the Brinkmann pan and I still need to rotate. This is even with my entire setup inside the diameter of the pan.

The outermost pieces will always dry faster. You will also notice that the top and bottom tray will dry quicker, so need to be rotated.
 
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