Venison Jerky

I have been making my own venison jerky for about 10 years now. People are generally impressed with it, so I thought that I would share my process. This process leaves the jerky very tender. It doesn’t dry it out to the point where you are chewing bark.

I use High Mountain Jerkey cure. You can pick it up at Cabela’s or Gander Mountain (or maybe even walmart). You can follow the directions in the kit, and the jerky will come out good enough. I have slightly modified the way I do it over time to enhance the flavor a bit, and here are the steps that I take.

1. Slice up the meet.

I generally cut them around 1/4″ thick. If it is a little thicker that’s okay, and if it is a little thinner that is okay as well.

2. Dry out the meat.

This part of the process is not in the directions, but is probably the most important.

Put paper towels down 3 layers deep (so stack paper towels three layers thick), and create enough surface area so that all your meat can be placed on them. I say three layers because that’s generally how many layers it takes for me. Place the meat on the paper towels. Take another 3 layers of paper towels, and put them over the top of the meat. With your hands, press down on the top layers until the paper towels start to to get wet. Leave the meat sitting for 10-15 mintues. The paper towels will pull a lot of the moisture out of the meat for you. If the meat is really wet and saturates the paper towels, repeat this process until the paper towels barely pull any moisture out of the meat.

3. Season the meat.

Follow the directions in the kit for mixing the appropriate ratio of seasoning to cure. There is a shaker bottle in the kit that you will use to apply the seasoning and cure. I generally use the 5lb mixture ratio. The kit says to only mix as much seasoning as you need for the weight of the meat that you have. I don’t pay any attention to this. I would guess that for 2-3 lbs of meat, I will use the amount of seasoning that the kit recommends for 5lbs.

Lay out enough wax paper so that you can place all of your meat down. Lay the meat down on the wax paper, making sure to push the meat together so that there are no gaps. This will drastically reduce the amount of lost seasoning. Once all of the meat is down, you can start applying the seasoning. My goal is make sure that I completely cover each piece of meat with the mixture. It is tough to put into words how “thick” I put on the seasoning. I would suggest starting out with smaller batches until you find the correct covering for your taste. The most important thing is just making sure that each piece is completely covered in seasoning. Once the meat is covered with seasoning, flip the meat over on the waxpaper and repeat the seasoning process.

When both sides are seasoned, take the meat off of the waxpaper and place into a zip lock bag. Before zipping up the bag, make sure to squeeze out as much of the air as possible. Put the meat into the fridge, and let it sit for ~24 hours. A few less or more won’t hurt anything.

4. Cook the meat.

I usually line cookie sheets with tinfoil, and place cooling racks over the top of the cookie sheets. Lining the cookie sheets with tinfoil stops any drippings from ruining the sheet. Take the meat, and lay out each piece on the cooling racks. Leave a little bit of space between each piece of (less than 1/8 of inch is plenty of space). Preheat the oven to 220 degrees. When placing the cookie sheets in the oven, the oven rack position doesn’t seem to matter. I have placed cookies sheets on three racks before, and things have turned out fine. Make sure to crack the oven door just a bit. I generally cook the meat for 99 mintues.

5. Freeze the meat.

After I take the meat out of the oven, I remove the jerky from the cooling racks and place it on paper towels while still warm. As the meat cools, moisture will build up on the meat, and the paper towels will soak it up. Once the meat has fully cooled, place it into ziploc bags. I put paper towels in the bags as well.

That is it. Enjoy!

Attachments:

1. 

   475983_896570076070_1927327123_o.jpg
   

I use whole muscle cuts like you do but I don’t cook it in the over. The cure in the meat will take care of any baddie found in the once the meat has reached 152 for a half hour and that happens when I smoke it. The smoke is half of the flavor.

I leave my meat in the smoker until its cool naturally. If I have to, I remove the heat source, not the meat. Any pieces that are thicker and not as dry as I like I lay on open racks in the over, crack the door and heat it up to 190 degrees, checking the dryness every 15 minutes.

If you want to try something interesting with your finished jerky, try running a pound of it thru the coarse head on your meat grinder. I grind it right into a ziplock bag. I carry jerky in this form into the deer stand in the fall. Between granola and ground jerky I have some pretty decent snacking. A piece of the ground jerky is just about right for a little flavor boost without eating a half a pound of the meat.

What is the wood of choice when doing your venison in the smoker? For beef jerky, I always use hickory, I don’t want to over power the venison flavor with too strong of smoke flavor.

Hickory isn’t bad. I don’t care for mesquite that much so I don’t use it. I like mine done using some apple in addition to the hickory along with a chunk or two of maple. Cherry or chokecherry does a nice smoke. Crabapple too. Hard to find around these parts, pear is a good smoking wood. If you can find it, pear makes a super good smoke as does hard maple.

I generally cut a nice 10″ diameter maple at the cabin each year and bring it home. I cut it up into pieces about 3″ thick and then split those into chunks. I have a couple buckets with several 1/2″ holes drilled around the sides that this green, chunk wood goes into and they get set in a corner somewhere in the garage to air dry for the next smoking session.

I just smoked a pile of lake trout using apple and pear and that blend did a superb job. Red meats stand up better to the hickory and maple while pork and fish do nicely with all fruitwood.

I am not a mesquite fan myself. I traded some salmon for some venison and want to turn some of into jerky, but don’t want to over due the smoke flavor. I prefer hickory for beef jerky and like it extra smokey. Have you ever used pecan wood for pork? Excellent!

Nope. Haven’t tried the pecan yet.

One other tip that I found that makes the jerky move flavorful is to use a Jaccard Meat tenderizer on the meat prior to adding the seasoning. This allows the seasoning to work much deeper into the meat adding more flavor. If you have need seen or used one check it out. This will make even the cheapest cuts of meat tender and tasty

Here’s batch #1

Attachments:

1. 

   IMG_0678.jpg