My 1st jerky done, alder was used ending up with a lost cherry...

[chiroken]

Hope I don't blow loading the pics here...

Well, 6 hrs and 40 minutes later I have jerky! Have to say it is pretty darn good. My kids think it's awesome, they can't believe it's homemade and not bought in a store. It has room for improvement, just not sure how to improve it, abit more heat for starters (ie. spicy).

The meat was round roast, 4lbs.

The marinade was a combination of looking over tons of recipes and chosing the more common ingredients:

3Tbsp brown sugar
2tsp salt
1tsp ground pepper
1tsp chilli powder
2tsp garlic powder
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup chopped onion (didn't have any onion powder but did have a chunk of onion in the fridge-worked out to 3/4 cup ;) )
1/8 cup worchteshire sauce (didn't have 1/4 cup as it turns out, finished the bottle off)

added 1tsp Sure Cure by Stuffers

sat overnight


then I racked it this morning


Preheated to 250^ then added 6 alder pucks (8 total) turned T^ down to 140^ and ended up increasing by 10^ as high as 170^. Turned and shifted racks up 1 about every hour. Majority was done after 6hrs 40min, left some of the thicker ones in for another 40min (had to leave to coach both my girls soccer teams!).

The finished product!


1 question...when the pucks are finished burning, do you still leave the vent fully open?

Any suggestions on the recipe I used? Any of these ingredients typically not used together? It was sort of a blend of looking over a whole bunch.

Overall I'll call smoker experient #1 a success.

[HawkeyeSmokes]

Looks pretty darned good to me.

Keep the vent open, it helps because your drying the jerky and not cooking it.

If you have extra, I can send you my address!

;D

[Quarlow]

Ok that does it I am not playing with you anymore. Your first time and you turned out better stuff than I do. I wish mine turned out like that. Good job chicken....oops I mean chiroken. ;D ;D ;D

[classicrockgriller]

Looks mighty nice.

Congrats.

Sorry you lost your sherry! ;D

[chiroken]

Sherry's my sister-in-law and she's not lost. My Bradley smoker cherry, well, that's another matter. ;)

Was planning on vacuum packing alot of this, now I'm not sure if it'll last very long at all! My teeth hurt from all that chewin'. I will try to put some away so that I can open up multiple flavours at the same time at a later date for an official taste tester session. I can see how my family might be getting spoiled in the future. Definitely heading back for more on sale round roasts to save for later smokes. $12.50/kg on for $7.69/kg. Pretty happy with that. Sure beats the $8 for those puny bags of commercial jerky! You just get warmed up and the darn bag is empty.

[chiroken]

I did let the racked jerky sit on the counter for 2 hours this morning before it went into the smoker (had to get the kids off to school etc., you know, Dad stuff) Not much really dripped off so I don't know if that affected the final product at all.

[Quarlow]

I haven't been cleaning anything off of my strips of meat either lately. It seems to add flavour, it just takes a little longer to dry out. The commercial stuff isn't even smoked, it's just dried. They might use liquid smoke.

[classicrockgriller]

Looks mighty good.

Glad Sherry is safe and your cherry is lost!

Looks like you cut the jerky strips with the grain of the muscle.

Might be why your teeth hurt.

Nice picture.

[chiroken]

I ended up cutting both ways, will plan on cutting cross grain mostly next time around. I used to take the odd 3-5 day flyfishing trip years back and a buddy would bring bags of jerky that we'd survive on. My teeth would hurt for days! Jerky for protein and oranges for sugar and liquid. Quite the diet. But fishing out of a belly boat for 6-8 hrs a day you're limited on what you can pack and it's a bit more challenging to make a "shore stop" if you've been drinking lots of fluids...

[chiroken]

As I just put together 2 marinades for smoke #2 tomorrow I realized my recipe listed above omitted 2 things: 1/2tsp cayenne pepper and 1/2 cup Bragg's (soy sauce).

[Tenpoint5]

Some good looking jerky

[chiroken]

Some good looking jerky

And it was good tasting too...today I'm going raising the bar and going for great tasting! 6lbs of beef been sittin' for a day, going in this mornin'. :)

[classicrockgriller]

You go chiroken!

Smoke that Jerky! ... Smoke that Jerky! ... Smoke that Jerky!

Be sure and take pics!

[DTAggie]

As much money as I spend on the commercial crap, guess I need to tackle this.

[Quarlow]

DT when you are finished making a batch and you look at it, I weighed mine and went "my god I am never paying for jerky again". The pile you just made cost you say $15.00 and figure out what you would pay for that much in the store, you will not buy it again.