Nutrition
| Per 100 g | Per 1 oz (28 g) | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 398 kcal | 113 kcal |
| Protein | 60.1 g | 17 g |
| Fat | 14.8 g | 4.2 g |
| saturated | 5.3 g | 1.5 g |
| Carbohydrate | 2.7 g | 0.8 g |
| sugars | 0.9 g | 0.3 g |
| Fibre | 0.5 g | 0.1 g |
| Sodium | 1296 mg | 367 mg |
Estimated from the ingredients, for the finished dried product. Actual values vary with the produce you use and how far you dry it.
Ingredients
Instructions
- Pick a lean cut and trim it hard — topside, round or silverside rather than anything marbled. Every streak of fat left in is a streak that stays soft and turns before the rest.
- Slice the meat to 6 mm across the grain. Cutting across gives a strip that bites through cleanly, where cutting along the grain gives one that has to be torn.
- Mix the soy, Worcestershire, hot sauce, liquid smoke and the four dry spices into a smooth marinade before any meat arrives. Liquid smoke is concentrated enough that a single unmixed drop leaves one strip tasting like an ashtray.
- Turn the strips until every face is wet, then cover the bowl and leave it in the fridge until morning. There is very little liquid here for two pounds of meat, so thorough turning matters more than it usually would.
- Lay the strips out without overlap and press each one flat. A strip that dries with a curl in it has an underside the air never reaches.
- Dry at 65 °C for 8 hours. This is where the temperature control earns its place: with meat the setting is a safety measure, and a machine with nothing but an on switch cannot be trusted to hold it.
- Blot the strips with paper partway through if beads of fat show on the surface. Even a lean cut renders something, and surface fat is what makes a batch smell old inside a week.
- Cool a strip completely and fold it. The surface should crack while the strip holds together, and the torn fibres should look dry rather than glossy — warm jerky always bends more easily than it will once cold.
- An airtight container in the fridge gives you two weeks, and a vacuum pack in the freezer six months. Nothing in this recipe is a curing salt, so it is the dryness and the cold doing the preserving.
