Deer Wafers - Not quite as planned

[ragweed]

Tenpoint 5 taught me through example that to be a good forum member you need to post not just your successes, but your failures too.  So here's my latest experience making my jerky wafers.

I just had 20 lbs of deer meat left from last season.  Here's 10 lbs of it ground coarse for two batches of jerky wafers.


My dehydrator capacity is 7 lbs so I decided to make 2 batches and dry on successive days.  As usual, I used Smoking Gun Jerky marinade as the base.  Added some cure and then black pepper and cayenne pepper to one.  Black pepper and Starnes Bar-B-Q sauce to the other.  Slicing the first batch and loading the dehydrators.


I put the chubs for the second batch into the freezer overnight.  The next day, I partially froze them and prepared to slice as wafers.


Here's where things went wrong.  I usually have no problem slicing and removing the casing before drying.  This time, after the overnight in the frig, the casings were stuck tight to the meat!  So I dried them casings and all figuring I could remove the casings later.  Half way through the drying process, I peeled off the casings and thought everything was fine.  Not so.  After drying, there was still a "film" of casing left on each wafer.  I had no choice but to cut off the casing remnant significantly reducing the appearance and the yield.  Here's a normal wafer and one from the "not normal" batch.


The jerky still tastes fine, especially the Starnes, but with deer so hard to come by after the EHD epidemic last year, it hurts to have to throw any away.  Especially when I could have prevented it.   I should have realized the casings would adhere to the meat with time.  So from now on, one batch at a time!

[pensrock]

Still look good to me. I tried your wafers at the SO and they were really good.

[Saber 4]

I hear you Joe, but they still look great. On the last batch I did with your recipe I noticed that I had a little meat sticking to the casing as I sliced and pulled it, from where I held the chub with my bare hands which must have warmed it up and I guess made it stick a little bit. I think I will start holding with a towel when I slice and see if it has any effect. Have you ever noticed that?

[ragweed]

I hear you Joe, but they still look great. On the last batch I did with your recipe I noticed that I had a little meat sticking to the casing as I sliced and pulled it, from where I held the chub with my bare hands which must have warmed it up and I guess made it stick a little bit. I think I will start holding with a towel when I slice and see if it has any effect. Have you ever noticed that?

Not really.  Just a little piece now and then.  See the second pic above.  The key is to freeze the chub just enough to slice but not so frozen to make it difficult to slice.  Ideally, the outside edge is fairly solid, but the middle just beginning to freeze.  I watch them closely and turn them so the entire circumference gets contact with the freezer shelf.

My problem with the second batch was from letting them sit in the frig overnight allowing the meat to bind to the casing.  Never again! 

[Tenpoint5]

That sucks