| Selecting the Meat |
Finding the perfect jerky meat Because Jerky is made of raw meat, it is essential to select a high quality piece of meat for your Jerky - now while it is generally possible to make Jerky out of every meat, most of the time you´ll find Jerky products made af "red" meat like beef or game. Poulty Jerky is also quite popular, while pork meat is not recommended for Jerky as there is a certain risk of trichinosis involved in eating raw pork meat. Personally, I make Beef Jerky from solid beef strips only - I NEVER make Jerky from ground beef. Now finding the right piece or "cut" of meat mainly depends on the area of the world you´re living in. I found that the meat cuts of Europe/Germany vary a lot from the meat cuts in the US ... so I can only give generall recommendations here. Taking tenderloin for jerky seems a bit inappropriate - what works best are roasts (like the well known roast beef), ham and also rump steak meet. I always buy large chunks of fresh south american steak meat ("heart of rump") and have found that it is a perfect Jerky meat - very tasty, very tender and nearly no fat at all.
Because high quality meat is expensive and I want to keep my "hobby" as cheap as possible, I always buy large pieces from a wholesaler and cut them myself, but if you have a butcher that will cut the meat for you into thin slices you´ll save yourself the hardest work! It´s generally much more expensive to buy the meat from a butcher!
Jerky yield Raw meat is approximately 2/3 of fluid, so be aware that you will also loose 2/3 of you initial weight of the raw meat after it´s dried. So 2 pounds of meat will only result in around 11 ounces of Beef Jerky. This is the reason why Beef Jerky is so expensive. But making your own can bring down the price by 50% or more!
Now we´re ready to continue with cutting and marinating the meat |
