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Well, once again my best laid plans got foiled, though in all this turned out alright.
I had a hankering to make some jerky a couple weeks ago, so I stopped by the store on the way home from work and bought a 4-ish pound top round roast. Snag #1, turns out that what I grabbed wasn't the best piece of meat. It was a nice strip of lean beef wrapped around a complete hunk of junk. I ended up using just the thin piece that was wrapped around the outside, the inside was too much gristle and fat to be useful. Make good stew though. Dunno, never bought a top round before, so maybe that's normal. So I cut it up into pieces about the width of my finger. I like the bigger jerky nuggets. Came out with just shy of 2 lbs of useable meat after trimming the fat and silver skin.
So on to snag #2. I had planned on using some Hi Mountain jerky seasoning that I'd had sitting in the cupboard for a while. Got the cure packet out, weighed it and coated the meat with it. No problem there. Pulled the spice packet out and apparently it had been sitting in the cupboard way too long. It had melted into what had the consistency of saltwater taffy. Guess the sugar in it got too hot and melted? Dunno. Anyway thought for a while about heating it up in some water to make a marinade with, but decided that in the shape it was in I wasn't going to chance. So the meat with the cure sat in the fridge a couple days to cure.
Now to the 'kitchen sink' part. Since I didn't have the spice mix I figured I'd just make my own outta whatever looked good. I don't quite recall everything, but there was some red wine, garlic, cayenne, brown sugar, sweet chili sauce, A1 sauce I think a little black pepper, and probably some other stuff too. Mixed it up real well and threw it in the fridge again to marinate.
Snag #3. I had planned on making this last weekend, but Saturday morning we got a call that my mother-in-law was being admitted to the hospital. Blood pressure was somewhere around 240/130. Not sure how she avoided a stroke or heart attack. Anyway rushed up to the hospital and spent the entire three-day weekend there. Finally got her BP down to normal, but she still has pulmonary hypertension and low blood oxygen. They sent her home on thursday with meds and oxygen.
Anyway, I finally got to get the jerky going Sunday morning. I skewered about 6 pieces each on bamboo skewers and hung them from the racks in the bandera, fired up the A-maze-n smoker with hickory and added a couple briquettes of kingsford blue. Smoked it at about 80 degrees for 6 hours. Then I took them out of the smoker and put them on jerky racks and into the convection oven at 100 degrees for another 8 hours. Some of the real thick pieces still have a little chew to them, but most of it is just right. Pretty good flavor too. Starts off with a nice red wine flavor, then gets a little bit of sweet, and finishes off with a touch of heat. Pretty good for just throwing the kitchen sink at it.
Hunk o' meat:
Marinating in the bag
After marinating, draining a little on the jerky racks before getting skewered
Smoking away
After 6 hours of smoke
All done. They show up a lot darker in the pics than they actually are. They're a nice mahogany color.
Thanks for looking
I had a hankering to make some jerky a couple weeks ago, so I stopped by the store on the way home from work and bought a 4-ish pound top round roast. Snag #1, turns out that what I grabbed wasn't the best piece of meat. It was a nice strip of lean beef wrapped around a complete hunk of junk. I ended up using just the thin piece that was wrapped around the outside, the inside was too much gristle and fat to be useful. Make good stew though. Dunno, never bought a top round before, so maybe that's normal. So I cut it up into pieces about the width of my finger. I like the bigger jerky nuggets. Came out with just shy of 2 lbs of useable meat after trimming the fat and silver skin.
So on to snag #2. I had planned on using some Hi Mountain jerky seasoning that I'd had sitting in the cupboard for a while. Got the cure packet out, weighed it and coated the meat with it. No problem there. Pulled the spice packet out and apparently it had been sitting in the cupboard way too long. It had melted into what had the consistency of saltwater taffy. Guess the sugar in it got too hot and melted? Dunno. Anyway thought for a while about heating it up in some water to make a marinade with, but decided that in the shape it was in I wasn't going to chance. So the meat with the cure sat in the fridge a couple days to cure.
Now to the 'kitchen sink' part. Since I didn't have the spice mix I figured I'd just make my own outta whatever looked good. I don't quite recall everything, but there was some red wine, garlic, cayenne, brown sugar, sweet chili sauce, A1 sauce I think a little black pepper, and probably some other stuff too. Mixed it up real well and threw it in the fridge again to marinate.
Snag #3. I had planned on making this last weekend, but Saturday morning we got a call that my mother-in-law was being admitted to the hospital. Blood pressure was somewhere around 240/130. Not sure how she avoided a stroke or heart attack. Anyway rushed up to the hospital and spent the entire three-day weekend there. Finally got her BP down to normal, but she still has pulmonary hypertension and low blood oxygen. They sent her home on thursday with meds and oxygen.
Anyway, I finally got to get the jerky going Sunday morning. I skewered about 6 pieces each on bamboo skewers and hung them from the racks in the bandera, fired up the A-maze-n smoker with hickory and added a couple briquettes of kingsford blue. Smoked it at about 80 degrees for 6 hours. Then I took them out of the smoker and put them on jerky racks and into the convection oven at 100 degrees for another 8 hours. Some of the real thick pieces still have a little chew to them, but most of it is just right. Pretty good flavor too. Starts off with a nice red wine flavor, then gets a little bit of sweet, and finishes off with a touch of heat. Pretty good for just throwing the kitchen sink at it.
Hunk o' meat:
Marinating in the bag
After marinating, draining a little on the jerky racks before getting skewered
Smoking away
After 6 hours of smoke
All done. They show up a lot darker in the pics than they actually are. They're a nice mahogany color.
Thanks for looking
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