Jerky Cure

[DADAKOTA]

I use 2 cups of soy sauce in my marinade along with worchestire (sp), accent, Cavensers, brown suger, various spices and peppers.  I marinate a minimum of 16 hours.  When finished, the jerky gets vacuum packed and frozen.   Been making it for many years and never used a cure.  Am I taking a chance on this?

[ExpatCanadian]

I'm sure other experienced Jerky makers will chime in one this, but I've always been quite dubious of the specific need to use a cure like sodium nitrite on a jerky produced from a whole muscle meat (ie. not ground meat jerky).  The reason for my opinion on this is that one of the main nasty bugs that nitrite and nitrate curing salts protects you from when making a ground product like sausage is Clostridium botulinum....  the "Botulism" bug.  However, this is a strict anaerobe...  meaning it cannot grow in the presence of oxygen.  The reason it can get going in sausages is that other aerobic bacteria present inside the stuffed casing use up the limited supply of oxygen creating an ideal environment for C. botulinum. When using a sliced whole muscle meat to make jerky... you're basically marinating it and then providing lots of air flow with heat and smoke to dry it out.... so that particular nasty bug never gets a chance to get going.

That's not to say you shouldn't be aware of the possibility of bad things growing while the meat is in the 40-140 danger zone, but your pre-treatment of the meat before the smoking and drying phase will really determine just how worried you need to be.  This includes the amount of salt in the marinade, hygienic meat handling practices etc.  A lot of jerky marinades, both commercial and home-made, contain enough salt already to provide the safety margin needed until the product loses enough water to inhibit further bacterial growth.

Anyway, just my 2 cents.....  hope this helps!

[RAF128]

What you're making sounds very much like a recipe it have for jerky.   Mine also had ginger and unsweetened pineapple sauce.    I never had a problem.    I'm going to have to find that and make it again.    Anyway, you have to remember that Soy sauce is full of salt and salt is a preservative.    That's what they used to use to preserve meat and fish in the old days before anyone invented Cure #1 or what ever.  I do think that the bigger your batch of meat the more Soy you'll have to use but most recipes are pretty specific about how much soy to a given amount of meat.

[smokeNcanuck]

I made a lot of whole muscle meat jerky with out using any cure (only soy)before I
joined this forum.  I never had any problems. I too asked this same question, not
long after I came along, I think expat makes a good point.  That said my decision was to
error on the side of caution and start using cure#1, I bought some for sausage making
anyway and little goes a long way.  In the end it's your choice, you have to eat it! ;) ;)

[RAF128]

I mentioned above that it sounded somewhat like a recipe I have.   Well I found it in an old DOS based recipe program.   I can't do anything with it except write it out long hand.   Anyway I have posted it in the jerky forum.   Beef jerky, Hawaiian Style - Maui