How to Make Tender Homemade Jerky

https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/598/how-to-make-tender-jerky-at-home
When you're making homemade jerky you are seasoning, curing and removing moisture from the meat by drying it out. Doing this helps prevent the growth of bacteria in your meat as it has a low water activity level, meaning that there is not enough water to allow bacteria to grow. But if you like your jerky a little softer it is possible to make a jerky that has low water activity but is still soft in texture like the tender bites from some of the big jerky companies. To make this at home the one way to do it is to use a seasoning and cure package like normal and then add additional sugar. The sugar envelopes the water molecules and prevents it from being able to cook or dry out of the meat and it also makes it unavailable for microbial or bacterial growth.

To do this we are going to be using 25 lb of eye of the round cuts with the fat cut off, a package of Walton's Bold Jerky Seasoning and cure, then we will add 18% of the starting weight in light brown sugar and 20% of its starting weight in water. So this would mean per lb of jerky we will be using 2.8 oz of brown sugar and 3.2 oz of water. Because we need the water to dissolve as much sugar as possible we will be mixing that in first and then adding the cure and seasonings to the mix. You really need to mix this incredibly well, my recommendation would be once you think you are done keep going for another few minutes.

Since the goal here is to keep the pieces tender we will want to avoid cutting the pieces too thin so we will stay in the 1/4 to 3/8 range. Since we have large eye of the round cuts we are going to use a slicer, this will make the process faster and give us far more uniform cuts. If we want we can cut the slices into strips to give it more of a classic jerky look before we tumble it. If you don’t have a slicer this precise slice adjustable knife from Victorinox works well it will just be a little bit slower. Now, I put my eye of the rounds in the our blast freezer for about 45 minutes first to make the slicing easier and more accurate.

Once we have sliced this into pieces that are 1/4 - 3/8" thick we will tumble them for 40 minutes to allow the meat to pick up as much of the solution as possible. We will have all the data on how much of the solution was picked up in the meat, what the meat weighed before smoking and what it weighed after. Average loss in product when making jerky is between 50 and 75%, we are hoping to achieve much better results with this recipe.

We are going to tumble this using our KMV Vacuum Tumbler but you can use something like the marinade express vacuum tumbler-pro. We have done that before and it works well, you just need to make sure you do not exceed the recommendations for the drum or it will not pick up as much of the solution as you want it too.

Now, if you don't have a way to tumble this at home you will need to hold it in a container in a cooler for 12-24 hours to try to get the meat to pick up as much of the solution as possible. Without a tumbler mixing in all the sugar and seasoning becomes even more important so make 100% sure everything is dissolved.

Now we are going to lay this out on screens leaving enough room in the middle of our screens to make a chimney. Since we sliced these somewhat thin I just put a probe thermometer in a piece that I folded in half.
Walton's Learning Center: https://wltns.link/learningcenter
Meatgistics Community: https://wltns.link/meatgistics
WaltonsTV YouTube: https://wltns.link/waltonstv
Walton's Facebook: https://wltns.link/facebook
Walton's Twitter: https://wltns.link/twitter
Walton's Instagram: https://wltns.link/instagram
Walton's Pinterest: https://wltns.link/pinterest

Видео How to Make Tender Homemade Jerky канала Walton's Inc.