Nutrition
| Per 100 g | Per 1 oz (28 g) | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 386 kcal | 109 kcal |
| Protein | 54.4 g | 15.4 g |
| Fat | 13.7 g | 3.9 g |
| saturated | 4.9 g | 1.4 g |
| Carbohydrate | 7.2 g | 2.1 g |
| sugars | 1.3 g | 0.4 g |
| Fibre | 2.9 g | 0.8 g |
| Sodium | 973 mg | 276 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
- 2.6 kg lean minced beef, low fat
- 3/8 cup soy sauce
- 3/8 cup Worcestershire sauce
- 1 1/2 teaspoons curing salt
- 2 tablespoons ground black pepper
- 2 tablespoons ground lemon pepper
- 2 tablespoons curry powder
- 2 tablespoons ginger
- 1 1/2 teaspoons coriander
- 1 tablespoon onion powder
- 1 tablespoon garlic powder
Instructions
- Use the leanest mince you can buy. There is no way to trim fat out of ground meat once it is mixed, and fat is what turns a jar rancid while the meat itself is still sound.
- Work the soy, Worcestershire, curing salt, pepper, lemon pepper, curry powder, ginger, coriander, onion and garlic through the mince with your fingers until the colour is even throughout. The curing salt is the one that must be properly distributed — it is doing a safety job rather than a flavour one, and a pocket without it is a pocket that is not cured.
- Do not add more curing salt than the recipe calls for. The quantity is worked out against the weight of the meat, and more of it is genuinely dangerous rather than merely salty.
- Chill the mixture for an hour before it goes through the gun. Cold mince holds its shape as it extrudes; at room temperature it smears and the strips come out ragged.
- Press out strips 10.2 cm to 12.7 cm long, leaving a finger of space between them. Without a jerky gun, roll the mince to 6 mm between two sheets and cut it into strips with a knife.
- Keep every strip to the same thickness even if that means weighing the mince out. Ground jerky has no grain to slow it down, so a thin strip will be brittle while a fat one is still raw.
- Dry at 71 °C for 3 hours. The setting is deliberately high because this meat goes on raw, and lowering it for a softer texture is the one change not to make here.
- Bend a cooled strip into a U. Finished jerky splits a little along the outside of the bend and holds together; one that snaps clean through has gone too far, and one that folds like leather has not gone far enough.
- Blot each strip and seal them in a jar — a month in the cupboard, three in a vacuum bag, a year in the freezer. Any beading of fat on the glass means they want blotting again.
