What Is Beef Jerky?

In times long gone by when man was a hunter gatherer in the traditional sense of the word we lived on berries and nuts and occasionally the odd piece of meat depending on the success of our hunting skills.

If the hunt was successful then man would be able to gorge on fresh meat for a short time and then hope and pray that something else was successfully hunted and killed before starvation. It wasn't long however before man discovered the art or science of food preservation by drying and smoking.

It's believed that the discovery first took place when scraps of meat were found that had been left close to the camp fire and so dried out and been exposed to the smoke. These discoveries then led to experimentation with drying, curing and smoking.

Meat that has been jerked is actually meat that has been dried in the sun and this is the basic concept. Additional techniques such as slicing the meat thinly and using fire to dry the meat as well led to more predictable results.

The traditional jerky would be pretty salty and not something that you would eat in isolation. It would be put in a pot and boiled with vegetables so the boiling process extracted much of the salt which would have the effect of tenderizing the meat and adding flavor to the vegetables at the same time.

With the advent of canning and latterly refrigeration we have no need to use the jerking process to preserve food and this is why it has now developed into a tasty snack. The smack however is not as salty as the original product and food technology has had its way in that artificial preservatives are used to keep the salt content down.

Can we make beef jerky at home? Yes, you can and it'll taste a lot nicer than the commercially produced snack. The one issue with homemade and reduced salt is that the preservation characteristics are not as pronounced so if you do make homemade beef jerky then you need to refrigerate it and consume it within a couple of weeks.

The basic process is to cure the meat in a brine and then to dry it either in your oven at home or you can use a smoker oven and the method that I'm going to use is with my home oven. There are however a couple of rules to follow:-

Use hunks of meat as opposed to steaks. This is because you need to have control over the cutting. The meat must be cut with the grain otherwise it will break up during the drying process. Steaks are typically cut across the grain.

Refrigerate the meat before slicing, this will help you slice the meat thinly.

A small amount of nitrate or nitrate color fixer in the brine will give you a nice pink result.

Brine overnight and drain the following morning but don't rinse with water.

Place the strips of meat on your oven racks and pop them in the oven with a drip tray underneath. Set the oven at 65?C for three hours then turn up to 80?C for a further 2 or three hours.

That's it, done. Let it cool and then freeze or refrigerate it.

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