My Jerky Experiment

[Bear1968]

Yesterday I set out my Trail Cam s for the first time this season. It kinda makes me feel like a little boy on Christmas Eve waiting to see what Santa brought me. So what does one do to numb the anticipation? .... Make Jerky of course!!!!   :D
I recently put in an order to Cabela's for another trail cam. I noticed that the Jerky Slicers (in a catalog ad) were down from $199 to $149 so I checked them on the web site trying to talk myself out of it and found that they are now on sale for $99  :o Sold!!!!! I ordered one.

I went to my favorite local Butchers Shop and picked up 10 lbs of Top Round sliced 1 inch thick. I took it home and ran it through my new slicer. 10 pounds took about 3 minutes to slice into 1 inch by 1/4 inch strips!
I used the Lem's Original Seasoning and Cure and threw it in the Garage fridge over night.
The next day AFTER setting my Trail Cams out I divided the batch into thirds. The first batch went straight into the dehydrator. The other two went into my Bradley 6 Rack with 3 Apple Pucks at 160f.
The first batch was finished in the dehydrator and put to rest in a paper bag in the fridge. The 2nd Batch was pulled from the Bradley and finished in the dehydrator. The third batch was finished in the Bradley at 130f with no smoke.
Well all 3 batches were put to rest in paper bags in the fridge I crawled up the stairs and went to sleep  .... about 5 AM :'(
A few hours later I woke checked my Cams and sampled jerky from each batch.
And the winner is .......

Hands down ... Batch #2 that was started in the Bradley and finished in the Dehydrator was the best!  ;) It seemed that after getting the smoke and color from the Bradley it was much easier to get it finished perfectly in the dehydrator.
Batch #1 in the dehydrator was good but lacked the smoke and had more of a red color to it. Batch #3 started and finished in the Bradley seemed to have lost the seasoning from the marinade or maybe just had the seasoning overpowered by my smokers own well seasoned personality. It also took at least twice as long and I still was not happy with the texture even with the damper removed to run wide open.
But back to that slicer ... I have a list that I keep in my head of my most prized possessions, My 6 rack Digital Bradley, Flat Screen TV, Grill, Truck are all on it ... I just added the Slicer to that list.  :)
10 lbs sliced perfectly in 3 minutes!
If you are interested they are on sale for $50 bucks off at Cabela's Site!
.... And for anyone interested about how my trail cams went, they shot a handful of doe s 1 rather large raccoon 2 neighbors that I would bet were checking for early Sheapshead Mushrooms and 1 Cam I forgot to turn on!
;D

[mikecorn.1]

Jerky looks great. I see it has a seal of approval. :)


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[Keymaster]

I like the right up on the jerky and it looks excellent!!!

[Quarlow]

Nice looking jerky. Good job Bear. So do you check your trail cams from the internet? Or do you do it the old fashion way, meaning you go out to the woods? I was watching that Moonshiners show and they said you could get trailcams that you can watch from your computer.

[Smoker John]

Cool experiment, the jerky looks great

[Bear1968]

Nice looking jerky. Good job Bear. So do you check your trail cams from the internet? Or do you do it the old fashion way, meaning you go out to the woods? I was watching that Moonshiners show and they said you could get trailcams that you can watch from your computer.

lol   :)  Heck no! I have to go out and get the SD cards then plug'em in the PC... I almost wish I could not do it this way it kinda takes away from the hunt. I did my hunting a bit different as a pup ... errr  .. as a cub. :)
The months of prep work ... Watching fields every night. I used to spend the entire month of September up in a tree stand. Now I just hang half a dozen cams  :-\

[Mark in Ottawa]

Great job, Bear.

So where did you end up getting the jerky slicer from? $99 is a great price..and very tempting!

Mark (in Ottawa)

[cobra6223]

nice looking jerky.. one of those gadgets would be nice and Santa is coming soon!!