Once I acquired a meat grinder I decided to try some jerky again, but this time using ground meat instead of roast slices. I found that I much prefer the texture of the ground meat jerky rather than the roast slices. I also found that whether it be a family jerky recipe or a seasoning kit there are so many different varieties of flavors out there that you should be able to find a flavor suitable for just about anybody’s taste. As mentioned before, I have had excellent success with the Hi Mountain brand seasonings and over the years I have tried just about every one of their jerky flavors.
I make my jerky using 100% game meat, no adding of pork or any fats. This year I set aside 18 pounds of ground pronghorn in three 6 pound portions to make jerky. I grind the meat first through the course plate of my grinder then again through the fine plate. This gives the end product a very smooth texture and helps me evenly mix the seasoning and cure.
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| Six pound portions of Spicy Lime, Bourbon BBQ, and Hickory flavored pronghorn jerky. |
Once the meat is ground I mix the seasoning and cure with ice water in a small measuring cup before pouring it over the ground meat. With gloved hands I mix the seasoning and cure into the ground meat for several minutes. The cure will begin to make the meat sticky to the touch and once this happens I place the seasoned meat back into the baggie and then place the baggie in the fridge to allow the cure to continue to work its magic. I generally leave the seasoned meat in the fridge overnight. This does take some planning, since I allow the meat to marinate in the fridge overnight. I plan carefully to do this step the day before I’m actually planning to start jerky on the dehydrator.
If I’m making multiple flavors of jerky I will process one flavor at a time so that I don’t get “cross-contamination” of flavors… unless that combination of flavors is wanted. After removing the bag of seasoned meat from the fridge I use my jerky gun to pump out jerky strips. My jerky gun has nozzles to pump out two different sized jerky strips… one large strip that is about 1.5” wide and two small strips that are about ¾” wide. I have made jerky with both and I think both definitely have their application. The smaller strips don’t take near as much time in the dehydrator and they are the perfect size for kids to eat as a snack at home. The wider strips are great for a good protein snack while out hiking, fishing, or hunting. I only made smaller strips this year because I still have a couple of vacuum sealed packs of the wider strips in the freezer.
With the meat loaded in the jerky gun the process is similar to using a caulk gun, with every pull of the trigger the meat is extruded through the nozzle onto the dehydrator tray.
I like to make sure there is a good amount of space between the strips on the dehydrator tray to ensure good heat circulation around the sticks. The small strip nozzle that I have can pump out two strips at once, but I find that I get a much more uniform and consistent jerky strip if I cover one side and only extrude one strip at a time.
Depending on your personal taste and your dehydrator, the amount of time the jerky will be in the dehydrator will vary. I prefer a jerky that still has a tiny bit of moisture in it and this year the small strips took between 4.5 and 5 hours to dehydrate to where I like them.
I remove the strips of jerky from the dehydrator and put them in an open plastic bag on the kitchen counter to cool. I often loose several strips here because the wife and kids get to them and want to try some while they’re still warm. This gives me some valuable early feedback though and they let me know their opinion of the flavoring. I found that three pounds of ground meat generally dehydrates down to one pound of jerky, so from the 18 pounds of ground pronghorn I started with I actually packaged up about 6 pounds of jerky.
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| The 6lb portion of Bourbon BBQ ground meat yielded ~2lbs of finished jerky. |
Once cool, I use kitchen shears to cut the long strips in half or into thirds and vacuum seal them for long term storage. The vacuum sealing and freezing also allows me to portion control the kids a bit better as well… if I were to just leave the jerky out on the counter I could go through several pounds of jerky in a matter of days but this allows me to make it last a lot longer.
I vacuum seal 8 to 10 strips of jerky in each package and freeze. One challenge with vacuum sealing the jerky strips is that the ends of the jerky can sometimes have jagged points or sharp edges that can puncture the vacuum bag from the inside causing a loss of the vacuum seal. I learned a new trick to reduce these punctures and subsequent bag failures. I took regular old plastic sandwich bags and cut them in half giving me two 6” x 6” plastic sheets and I wrapped the 8 to 10 strips of jerky in one of these sheets before putting them in the vacuum bag and sealing them. I didn’t have a single vacuum bag failure this year while sealing the packages of jerky.
I’ve used a number of the Hi Mountain seasoning kits and my favorites are hickory, spicy lime, and cracked pepper & garlic blends. Cajun, inferno, mesquite, pepper, and pepperoni blends were pretty good. I wasn’t a fan of the mandarin teriyaki, sweet & spicy, or bourbon bbq blends. Hi Mountain makes a couple different “variety packs” that gives you a chance to test out several different flavors and identify the ones that you prefer. Once you identify the flavors that you like, don’t be afraid to experiment a bit by adding your own ingredients or mixing flavors… these seasoning kits really just give you a foundation to start with and you can build up from there. One thing that I was hoping to try this year but forgot until it was too late and I had already mixed all the seasoning and cure with the meat was to add some liquid smoke to the ice water & seasoning/cure mixture to hopefully give the jerky a nice smokey flavor… maybe next year I’ll remember.
Making jerky has been an excellent way for me and my family to enjoy wild game meats throughout the year as a fun snack.
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