Have had my new SM025 for a few months and been real happy with it so far. I have done a few small batches of jerky and had mixed results. One batch went straight to the dogs. So I thought I would pass on what I learned for the new guys. The best advice I can give is to start out with a very small chunk of wood, the smoke goes a long ways on thin sliced meat. Second, is the marinade, homemade can be 50/50 some were ok some were bad. seemed like the marinades I was making were dark in color and turned the meat dark and the finished product looked more like something you scoop out of the litter box than jerky. I think that had to do with the marinade and oxygen. So I broke down and purchased a mixed flavored box of jerky seasoning packets from nesco on amazon, around 20 bucks for 24 packs.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I found some nice looking super thin cut meat at Walmart for some sort of mexican dish, forgot the name, but a 1lb container was 6 bucks. It was very lean and had great red color. I mixed one pack up with the cure, which I think is one of the tricks to achieving good color when done. I quickly coated the meat as it was,no cutting, and put into a ziplock and removed all the air. Vacuum sealer might be my next purchase. In the fridge overnight. I hung the slabs over 3 rails of the rack and put a very small chunk of hickory in and set the temp to 165. Checked them an hour in and dumped moisture. Dumped again after an hour and they looked really good. I pulled them up and laid them flat on the rack to finish. I was very happy with this batch, color, texture and taste!
Hope this helps some of the new guys.
Hat's off to all that have served on this Memorial Day weekend...Semper Fi!!!!!
Smoke Em If Ya Got Em!!!!!
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