Moist and Tender Jerky Experiment
Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2018 17:39
Wanted to attempt to make a very tender and moist jerky. I know this sounds contradictory but I'd read where you could reduce the shrink in jerky to only 20% if you bind the available water with both sugar and salt. Think jelly. Its got very little available water.
With that thought in mind I made an attempt at this.
I sliced an eye of round thick - about 3/8's of an inch slicing across the grain.
Next I weighed the meat (6.33lbs) and though I would normally use 1.3% of my spice blend I increased this to 1.5% since - assuming this worked - the meat would not shrink and concentrate the spices and salt.
After measuring the spices and cure based on total meat weight I mixed 20% water and 18% dark brown sugar to a container and mixed this well.
From this point you can either marinate the meat for 24 hours or use a vacuum tumbler and tumble the meat for 40 minutes.
Next step was putting it in the smokehouse. It was late in the day when I did this but my curiosity pushed me on. At first, I ran the smokehouse with no smoke at 125F for an hour or so to get most of the "wetness" off but when I noticed the edges beginning to dry I put a heavy smoke on them and gradually increased the temperature over time. Unfortunately, sleep was weighing on me more than my curiosity and I pulled them from the smoker to finish in the electric jerky drier which has a timer on it.
Checked the jerky this morning and it was shelf stable and weighed a little over 3.7 lbs (I had eaten a piece before weighing) so it looks like I only experienced 41.6% shrink from the original starting weight which is better than the 1:2 or 1:3 ratios normally expected when making jerky.
The jerky is quite tender and very moist. As a traditionalist I'm on the fence on whether or not I like it or not. Its different. Very moist and it has a teriyaki sweetness to it which is the first thing you taste with the spices and heat coming in at the end. In hindsight, I think some of this sweetness could be overcome by bumping the initial spice blend up to compensate for the lack of shrink. Don't know how much more I could add and if this increase could be figured on a directionally proportional amount based on the reduced shrink. Seems reasonable since I believe it could stand a good bit more spice to overcome the sweetness but I'll definitely have to run another test to see where this goes. I'll probably split the difference and try that.
One good thing is I was due to the stickiness of the jerky I was able to amend the flavor by adding some ground peppers on the surface of the jerky.
As I said, I'm on the fence whether I like this or not and was simply doing this as an experiment but I do plan on giving samples of this away and see what others think. I imagine this will be a big hit with children but not sure about adults.
With that thought in mind I made an attempt at this.
I sliced an eye of round thick - about 3/8's of an inch slicing across the grain.
Next I weighed the meat (6.33lbs) and though I would normally use 1.3% of my spice blend I increased this to 1.5% since - assuming this worked - the meat would not shrink and concentrate the spices and salt.
After measuring the spices and cure based on total meat weight I mixed 20% water and 18% dark brown sugar to a container and mixed this well.
From this point you can either marinate the meat for 24 hours or use a vacuum tumbler and tumble the meat for 40 minutes.
Next step was putting it in the smokehouse. It was late in the day when I did this but my curiosity pushed me on. At first, I ran the smokehouse with no smoke at 125F for an hour or so to get most of the "wetness" off but when I noticed the edges beginning to dry I put a heavy smoke on them and gradually increased the temperature over time. Unfortunately, sleep was weighing on me more than my curiosity and I pulled them from the smoker to finish in the electric jerky drier which has a timer on it.
Checked the jerky this morning and it was shelf stable and weighed a little over 3.7 lbs (I had eaten a piece before weighing) so it looks like I only experienced 41.6% shrink from the original starting weight which is better than the 1:2 or 1:3 ratios normally expected when making jerky.
The jerky is quite tender and very moist. As a traditionalist I'm on the fence on whether or not I like it or not. Its different. Very moist and it has a teriyaki sweetness to it which is the first thing you taste with the spices and heat coming in at the end. In hindsight, I think some of this sweetness could be overcome by bumping the initial spice blend up to compensate for the lack of shrink. Don't know how much more I could add and if this increase could be figured on a directionally proportional amount based on the reduced shrink. Seems reasonable since I believe it could stand a good bit more spice to overcome the sweetness but I'll definitely have to run another test to see where this goes. I'll probably split the difference and try that.
One good thing is I was due to the stickiness of the jerky I was able to amend the flavor by adding some ground peppers on the surface of the jerky.
As I said, I'm on the fence whether I like this or not and was simply doing this as an experiment but I do plan on giving samples of this away and see what others think. I imagine this will be a big hit with children but not sure about adults.