The Adventure Begins - First Batch of Beef Jerky - Teriyaki & Regular

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jusmejim

Fire Starter
Original poster
May 26, 2013
32
15
This is my first attempt at making Beef Jerky.  Everything was made much easier because of all the great users of this forum.

I'm using Eye of Round that I had the butcher slice at 1/4" thick.  Some looks a bit thinner, while a few pieces were fairly "chunky".  Oddly I ended up with exactly 4#.  Not even .01 over or under.  I separated the meat into two, 2# portions, since I was making Teriyaki and Regular.

For the teriyaki I used a recipe that we use for homemade teriyaki when we make chinese.  For the regular I just made something up using several different recipes off the forum, and I used cure #1 in both batches.

I started on Friday night and made up both batches of marinade.  Since both batches were 2# I used just shy of 1/2 tsp. of cure in each batch.  I mixed the meat with the marinade in a bowl, and placed 1 or 2 slices at a time into a ziploc bag to make sure that each piece was coated.

I got both batches marinating around 7:30 pm Friday, and "mixed" the meat around at least every 6 to 8 hours.  One observation would be that I think next time I'll just use a covered bowl instead of a bag, since it seems a few slices of the teriyaki didn't get fully penetrated by marinade.





 
The actual process of drying/smoking the jerky began this morning (Sunday).  I'm using an MES30 to do the smoking and started the temperature off at 130, which I'll maintain for 2 hours.  After that I'll add some Hickory chips and increase the temp by 10* every hour.up to 180.  

I drained the meat this morning, laid out some newspaper and covered it with paper towels.  Placed my racks on top of the paper towels and laid out the meat on the racks.  Placed some paper towels on top of the meat and blotted it a bit with another paper towel.  I did leave the meat with a bit of moisture in hopes of getting a bit more flavor or possibly a bit of "glaze".

Some of the meat that I marinated in the Teriyaki seems to have not gotten marinated very well, thus my earlier comment that I might just use a bowl next time so that I can mix it easier.

I added a few sesame seeds to the teriyaki and some crushed black pepper to the regular jerky.  Started it "drying/smoking" at 7:30 with the temp set at 130*.

The meat marinated for 36 hours.  








 
A couple of early observations.  The meat on the bottom rack in the front is getting done MUCH quicker than the rest.  Probably to be expected since that is right above the heat source.  I have rotated the racks a couple of times already.

Also, at the 2 hour mark when I first rotated the racks I noticed there was a lot more moisture dripping than I had expected, so I'm going to have the flavor from one style dripping on the other style.  I wonder how this will affect the taste?  Maybe not a good idea to try and do two flavors at the same time on this type of smoker.

We're also now having a torrential rain storm so I'm hoping the humidity doesn't affect anything.  The smoker is under the carport so not getting rained on directly.
 
And the results.  Overall it's not bad, but I certainly need to tweak the recipes, and cooking times, etc.  I probably pulled it a bit sooner than I should have, but it was really cooking "uneven", and most of it had plenty of smoke flavor already, so I didn't want to ruin it with too much smoke.  I'll get it in the freezer tonight, and package it so that anything I take out will be used up within a few days, so I think I should be ok as far as it (not) going bad.

 The Teriyaki recipe for stir-fry isn't "rich" enough for a marinade, so I need to find a good recipe for that.  I ended up with right at 2# and started with 4#.





 
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