The Cook’s Kitchen

Near the checkout at my favorite sporting goods store is a display rack of beef jerky. Several different flavors and all made from strips of meat, not the ribbons of ground meat. I see it every time I’m there but since I make my own jerky I just never paid attention to the price until the other day. To my surprise the one-pound packages were over 20 dollars! Granted, because of weight loss during the drying process you need to start with over two-pounds of raw meat to wind up with a pound of dried product. But still …. that is an expensive snack food. I’m going to show you how to make your own jerky at home with outstanding results the first time out. I’m going to skip right over the “pioneer history” of jerky and I’m not going to discuss all of the different ways to make jerky because quite frankly some methods are quite time consuming.

This brings us this to a product review of two items, a jerky cure / seasoning mix and a jerky rack. Both of the featured products come from Hi Mountain Seasonings, a small Wyoming company that has made a big name for itself when it comes to jerky. I have used their seasonings for years, but the rack was new to me last year.

The packages of seasoning are available in about 15 flavors and come in “kit” form. The kit contains individual packages of cure and seasoning for preparing 15 pounds of meat. A handy mixing chart gives the proportions of each to season as little as one pound at a time. A shaker is included along with a very complete set of instructions. In a nutshell, you buy something like a London broil, chill it in the freezer until it gets icy, slice it into 1/4″ thick slices, trim the fat, weigh the meat, mix the seasoning and cure, apply to the meat, place meat in a zipper bag and refrigerate for 24 hours. TIPS: Chilling the meat helps for even slicing. Slicing with the grain will give a more “chewy” product and slicing against the grain will give a more “tender” product.

Cooking is really a simple operation. If you own a dehydrator, follow the manufacturer’s instructions for making jerky. If you own a smoker you need to experiment on your first batch to get cook times and smoke amounts dialed in. Generally smokers set around 200° will require about 2 hours of cook times. If you want to use your oven the same temps and time will apply. In either the smoker or the oven, the strips can be laid directly on the existing racks or on special jerky trays.

If you want to go one step further, the jerky rack, called a Jerky Maker comes into the picture. This handy invention has a stainless steel drip pan with a clip-on upright skewer holder. You thread the jerky onto the skewers and set the entire rack into the oven or on your smoker. This is a nice design because the skewers store in the drip pan and the skewer holder acts as a lid. Other than making jerky this rack will double for cooking things like Chinese barbecued pork.

Ratings:

The seasoning / cure mix is a wonderful product. The huge number of flavors should suit any taste. I will give this product a solid A. I would recommend it for purchase.

I like the design and the size of the jerky rack and also the fact that it comes apart for storage. The heavy gage stainless pan will last forever. I was a little disappointed at the skewers themselves because they are not stainless and the coating is flaking off after just five uses. Due only to the quality of the skewers, I would rate this product a B instead of an A. It’s a good buy and replacement skewers should only be a few dollars at most.

I contacted the manufacturer to give them a heads up with this problem and they promptly replied that I was only the second one to report it to them, but that they would be shipping a complete replacement rack to me. They recommended hand washing the skewers to get the best life out of them. This is excellent product support in my book.