Best way to use jerky gun?

[chiroken]

I've got a HM Jerky gun: http://www.jerkynspice.net/images/Jerky%20Master%20small.jpg that I have a very hard time to use. The amount of force needed to squeeze the meat out is ridiculous! What am I doing wrong? I'm rolling "sausages" to put in the tube, packing it without air bubbles but it's not working well. I've got 5lbs to smoke today, help!

[squirtthecat]

I had trouble with mine at first as well.   If you add some more water to the mix it makes it easier to extrude.

(you still get workout nevertheless)

[Quarlow]

You need to get a hold of Kirby and get one of his water stuffers. That is the slickest thing I ever seen.

[pikeman_95]

You can warm the meat to make it easier to push out. Or you can add water to the meat to make it easier to push out.

Or you can give up on the gun and try this. Spray Pam on a cookie sheet, place the meat on the sheet and flatten it out with you hands them place plastic wrap over the meat. spread a little flower or powdered sugar on top of the plastic wrap and get out the old rolling pin and roll the meat out to a consistant thickness of about 3/16 of an inch. The flour or the powdered sugar is to keep the roller from sticking to the plastic wrap. Now take a spatula and score lines through the plastic wrap into the meat to form sticks. Now you can pull the plastic wrap and finish the cuts through the meat following the lines the you pushed through the plastic wrap. Sounds complicated but it is not. You can make sticks this way. I have a special board the has strips of plastic on each side that controls the thickness that the roller can go. I then have a tool that I push through the plastic that makes the stick scores through the plastic wrap.
Good luck.
I could talk to you about the kirby cannon but you need an answer for right now.
Kirby

[muebe]

A little bit of vegetable oil on the plunger and inside of tube might help smooth things out a bit ;)

[chiroken]

I'll try adding some water. Might try rolling it out too. Just watched a youtuber use a stainless? gun for ground turkey jerkey and it looked simple. The meat also looked more of a paste than my ground beef. He kneaded it for 5 min. with seasoning and then put in fridge overnight. I mixed upthis batch months ago and after fighting with the first 1/2 I just froze the other half until yesterday.

[chiroken]

Well, we'll see how it turns out. Added water and it helped go through the gun but it came out too wet/loose and wouldn't stay together, basically just fell apart. Not good considering I use the standard racks and not the tight ones some of you use.

Then decided to try rolling it. Tight for time, kids gotta get to soccer so I slapped some saran wrap on a cookie sheet, added a big ball of meat and flattened it out as thin as I dared with my hand like I would a monstrous hamburger patty. Put the rack over it, then inverted upside down and peeled off the saran. Voila! A huge patty laying on a rack. 5 large thin patties were popped into the smoker. I figure I can buck it up into strips after the fact.

Definitely slower going in the smoker with the added water.

It look as pretty as my typical jerky but making those patties only took a few minutes and I may have just found my new method for ground meat jerky  ;) I'll try to remember to take a pic when they're done, looks kinda funny. As long as it tastes good I could really care less. (and the kids will be happy to have chucks in their lunches.

[pikeman_95]

I have a post that I made to show how to make jerky with the Cookie sheet system. The blue paper represents the meat in the post. I intend to do a batch soon so I will have some real pictures of the process.

http://forum.bradleysmoker.com/index.php?topic=18022.msg218224#msg218224

Kirby

[chiroken]

@ kirby: Thanks, I remember seeing this post before, probably last year when I first did GB jerky. Will be great with actual meat pics too. Looks like a good system. Love your "industrial" rolling pin too! So you start the jerky on the SS sheets and then part way through transfer them to the grates? (the text for the pic is 1/2 chopped off). Where does one get sheets of SS like that? I have 2 sets of racks in my 4 rack smoker so I'd need to buy 8 pieces to match the bradley rack dimension.

[pikeman_95]

Any sheet metal shop can shear the sheets for you. They do not have to be too thick. Probably 1/32 of a inch would do just fine. I made the stick impression tool out of length of UHMD plastic. I ran it through my table saw to dado out the center.

Your second option is my sausage stuffer with the jerky tip. It works well for jerky but the stuffer was primarily designed  for sausage making.

Kirby

[chiroken]

So.... a very long frustrating day. After 12 hrs on the smoker I set it for 2 more and just went to bed. It would not firm up, stayed quite soft. It's more firm today after having cooled down. Was quite oily too. Wonder if this is why it wouldn't firm up due to the oil content? Pretty sure it was extra lean which should be 90/10. There's a chance it might have been just lean. Before bed I took it all out and paper towel'd both sides and stuck it back in.

I ended up (after several hours) putting the "patties" on a cutting board and slicing into 1" strips (followed the rack bar marks) with a fillet knife, then re-racked and put back in. This did speed up the process somewhat.

Overall not happy with the product either time I've done it. Much prefer whole muscle jerky. Might have to make 1 more batch of ground beef jerky with my normal spicing (used the HM hickory that came with the gun) to see if it's more of a flavour thing...

[Quarlow]

Well experimentation is the best way to get it right. And one thing, unless you really did something horribly wrong you usually can eat your mistakes. Keep trying and good luck on the next attempt.