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r8rphan

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Glad to see this forum..

Once I get to a place where I'm semi comfortable brewing AG, and can settle into somewhat of a routine.. I want to learn to make jerky.. and make it exactly how I like it and save money in the process..

I love jerky, and I can never get the kind around here that I like.. And what I can get, costs a small fortune...

I live in the woods where there's a lot of, well, 'wood'... and so I want to make a jerky smoker.. the kind that doesn't require a power receptacle...
 
Not sure what you are searching for but this might get you started...
Flank steak (my favorite but any lean cut will work) sliced into thin strips or 1/3" cube strips. Along the grain.
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup soy sauce
Kosher Salt to taste
Black pepper to taste
Mix and Marinate overnight. This is a good base that I have tweaked many different ways. I prefer a good base of sweet and salty with hints of whatever I am in the mood for such as onion, garlic, hot sauce, various peppers, teryaki, apple cider, etc.
I line them on the thick wooden skewers and slip through the grill grating to hang. You can get a lot in one batch this way vs. laying across the grate
Hickory or Oak (I'm from MO so my wood pile is full of them)
 
There's a style of jerky that's never at the local sotrews up here, but I could find in convenience stores and liquor stores down in SoCal when I lived there..

It's the style I got hooked on as a kid..

It's usually in fairly large sheets, say in the range of 3" x 6" to 4" x 10".. It's very thin and flat... Not a lot of texture on the surface.. It's so thin that you can kinda see light through it.. It's also packed full of flavor.. You have to pretty much tear it apart with your teeth and it makes your head 'jerk' a little when you do.. (hence the name 'jerky' I always thought).. It also takes a while to chew... But you'd get flavor out of it the whole time...

The thick, soft tender stuff has it's place, but I miss that stuff big time... The Jack Links stuff is sorta middle ground, and I really like it too, but it's pricey...
 
Just can't do the jacks links. The soft and tender to leather is as much of a function of the time on the smoker than the cut. Of course paper thin will dry quicker than 1/4 inch strips but both can be made into leather. Your style is the thin strips referenced. I do the cube more often because it leaves more partially rendered fat for flavor, but love them both. I am a jerky junky and have been forever.
 
I am a jerky junky and have been forever.

Me too.. I spend 15-25 dollars a week on the stuff, and would really like to get the cost down, and simultaneously get the quality up..

I recently bought a vacuum sealer, and tried buying a large top sirloin roast and butchering the steaks out of it myself.. I got about 13 nice steaks out of it for a $40 investment in meat.. Vacuu-sealed them and froze them.. Now I know they will keep a long time, and I can throw them on the grill at my leisure...

That makes me happy.. :ban:

I'm thinking one of them roasts would make a 'lot' of good jerky..
:rockin:
 
Flank is my preferred, any lean"ish" cut on sale will work. For the paper stuff a top sirloin works well.

I have a home slicer, like the deli version but smaller, So i Run the flank along the grain at the 1/4 inch mark. If you are form STL, the recipe is attempt at copying Tom Seinard's Smokehouse in the valley.

PS the soy can be replaced or cut with salt, that's its only real flavor addition, but the liquid marinade penetrates better than a dry rub.
 
I have a home slicer, like the deli version but smaller, So i Run the flank along the grain at the 1/4 inch mark.

I have one of those too.. I've heard that if you semi freeze the meat first, you can slice 'very' thin...

How thin does the meat need to be prior to smoking/drying to get the paper thin stuff I'm talking about..
 
So, if I want to make a wood fired smoker, what should I keep my eyes out for to make it out of.. Old wood stoves, water heaters, outhouses ;), what?

Eventually, I'd like to custom fabricate something up from total scratch... but for now, what is 'ideal' from yard sales and scrap yards to make something without a lot of hassle 'right now?'.. Ideally, it's got to be 100% non-electric.. preferable 100% wood fired (or wood and charcoal)..

We have lodgepole/ponderosa/jeffrey/sugar pine, white/doug fir, incense cedar, black oak, and manzanita in the woods around me......

There are some old gas grills around, a couple old hibachis, and so on.. I imagine I can at least use the 'grills' themselves from that.. I also have some scrap steel and expanded steel I can use.. But it's not the 'flat' kind of expanded steel, but rather the kind where the remaining structural steel around each opening has a 'twist'...
 
I have one of those too.. I've heard that if you semi freeze the meat first, you can slice 'very' thin...

How thin does the meat need to be prior to smoking/drying to get the paper thin stuff I'm talking about..

Just thick enough to get full slices and not bits, you probably won't be able to match what they do with a commercial slicer, but close enough. It will thin a bit more as it dries. Partial Freezing will help but also impacts the structure of the meat. Once you get good with it you can slice fresh from the butcher, or better yet have then slice it for you :D. Use 2 skewers for each line to stretch the hanging meat. You don't want it folded over itself or touching others, hence the grate seperation.
 
If I had rule of the house rather than SWMBO and the #^%%$ subdivision association, I'd build a brick one out back, and an open pit next to it.

All you need is a relatively (but not completely) airtight chamber with racks and a thermometer, a vented fire pit (to control airflow/temp, a covered hibachi would work well) and ducting between them. There was absolutely nothing wrong with that one pictured except it was a Johnny on the Spot for the chamber which made me sick. If you do something tall like that remember the top stuff will smoke faster and heavier, like an attic ham if familiar with those. Your imagination, suitable material (I'd avoid plastic but it is used) and sense of sanitation are the only limits. FYI a long ducting run bleeding heat will increase your time required but also improve the result.

And I hear you on wood only, I've had some great meats out of electric smokers but I'd never use one. Of your woods, oak is the only one I have used. Only hardwoods, no pine or fir...
 
I wonder if there is a way to combine a campfire pit with smoking meats?

I have been considering all sorts of ideas for building an outdoor campsite style fire pit, with a raised hood, to contain sparks and also keep snow and rain off of it (so it can be used in the winter too).. was thinking about re-purposing an old satellite dish (about 8' in diameter for this purpose.. Was even considering building a teepee in a stand of trees out front...

Another thing I was kicking around was to build one of those grill/chimney deals you see in many campsites (and parks), that are made out of small boulders.... But I could never find any plans for one... Seems like you could build a smoker chamber in the chimney section, or at least a diverter to a smoker on the backside.. That would be totally 'awesome'.. Maybe build a semi covered structure around it, so I could sit out there year round and drink homebrew while I grilled and smoked meats at the same time... Maybe some sort of side chamber that is heated but contains no smoke for baking bread or pizza..
 
This is the best example I can find on google.. But the kind I'm talking about were wider and taller (but not so deep), with a sloped chimney, and made from river rock style stone (6-10" round or semi-round).. Bigger and better looking...

But they had this same general design, and the grill part itself were like those you see at campsites now, where they embed a 3 foot high pipe in cement, and then put a four sided heavy gauge steel box on top, with a very heavy gauge grill, one half griddle with a big handle that you can use to raise and lower them into various adjustment notches...

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