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I made some ground beef jerky yesterday.

I took some top round steaks and ground it up using an 1/8" plate size in my VillaWare grinder. I ended up with 3 lbs. of raw meat after trimming and grinding.

I used 3 seafood racks, and 2 regular racks in my smokette. I don't have the 5 slot rack holders, but there was enough space between the extruded jerky and the top of the slide just to put 2 of the racks on top of the slides. (I know that sounds confussing.)

Anyhow, here's the temps and times I experienced:

12:00 noon:
Put all 5 racks in, left door cracked, and cranked it to 170 for the 1st 45 minutes. No wood.

Added 2 oz. of hickory, cranked it upto 200, and closed the door for an hour. Shuffled the racks around for even cooking.

After that I left it on 200, and I checked it every 1/2 hour. Every 1/2 hour I would pull some finished strips off and rearranged the remaining ones until 3:30 when the last of them were pulled.

I tried to pull the jerky off while it was still pliable. I think I had about 4 strips that were left on too long and will turn into treats for my Sister's dog. (Dogs need Christmas gifts too ya know!)

The recipe I used tasted fine and is more than edible. I've definately tasted more flavorful, but I was testing the technigue. It was my 1st ground jerky in the Smokette.

I am happy with the texture and eye appeal. Now to add a lil sumthin' sumthin' to the flavor!
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Hi guys. I too use my jerky shooter with ground beef for some types of jerky. And Ive also found the HighMountain seasonings.. weak at best so I add extra garlic powder, cayenne, and ground pepper to the mix. And while Ive tried using my CS, my family's preferred method is still in our dehydrator. But I wanted a smoked product and refused to use an artifical smoke additive. So... I tried positioning my dehydrator about 6" above my 008's smoke hole when I made jerky. Ran the empty 008 for a couple of hours with some apple for smoke. That worked really well but one word of caution. After you do that just once... the dehydrator always smells like smoke. And I imagine if I used this method enough times, the dehydrator would gum up (from the smoke) and die. But for now... we enjoy!!

Bob
My friend got some HM seasoning for Christmas 1 year and had me make some whole muscle jerky for him. I found out the same thing you guys did. Ya need either less meat or more seasoning.

Since then, I've started selling Eastman Outdoors products, and have gotten pretty good feedback on it. They give good instructions on how to make it "normal" or "extra strength"

This time, however, I used a recipe out of Eldon Cutlip's book for his "original style" Like I said, its mighty edible. I just like a little more tang. Maybe a lil more sweet to clash with the heat.

No Donna. No pictures this time. I never leave any evidence after a trial run of something just incase it was a total failure! Big Grin

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