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Smoker's on for jerky over here... What are you making?

thedutchtouch

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Half of the venison jerky I am making in preparation for my Alaska trip next week just went on the smoker. This batch is a simple soy/Worcestershire/black pepper recipe, next batch is Hank shaw's lemon/paprika/cayenne/garlic/pepper recipe. Never made jerky before but the smoker is set at 180 and we'll see how it's looking in a few hours.Screenshot_20220917-135157.png
 
I am just using pit boss competition blend in my pellet smoker (it's a rectec but I can but the pit boss pellets locally at Lowes) I am not into smoking enough to mess around with different pellets for different things, this blend seems ok for everything so far. Just over two hours in, a few pieces around the edges are done enough to try, tasty but the rest needs some more time
 
3 hours in, I pulled a few of the pieces around the edges- drip tray doesn't cover them fully so they dried faster. Looks like everything is progressing alright, the piece I tried tasted great but the rest is still a bit bendy. Smoker has been hanging at 180 like a champ.

Edited to add some of the in progress pictures:

Most of the way through the first batch:Screenshot_20220917-163624.pngScreenshot_20220917-163634.pngScreenshot_20220917-164820.png

Took this batch off and put the second on:

Screenshot_20220917-222707.png
 
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Best part is if you dry it too much, you can grind it to a meat powder for pemmican.
Interesting, I hadn't thought of that. I do think some pieces went a bit long of dried a bit faster because they were near the edges or on the thinner side of the hand cut spectrum, but I'm hoping they will be salvageable, my plan is to try to just eat those ones myself so my brother/dad/uncle who I'm meeting will have the better pieces, but I have actually wanted to try to make that as well. Hopefully this is all good stuff and I'll have to shoot another to find out what pemmican is like.
 
While I haven't yet, I've thought about drying-n-grinding excess meat then storing it in a vacuum sealed mason jar and O2 absorber. In theory, it should keep almost indefinitely yet retain it's nutrition.
 
While I haven't yet, I've thought about drying-n-grinding excess meat then storing it in a vacuum sealed mason jar and O2 absorber. In theory, it should keep almost indefinitely yet retain it's nutrition.
Isn't the same theoretically true about canned meat if done with a pressure canner? I feel like I'd rather get into storing hydrated meat than dehydrated if it's going in mason jars either way. Or both
 
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