The Farmer had a successful deer hunt this year and we were blessed with venison. Aside from the tenderloins and a few roasts, we had most of the meat ground. I take it to our local butcher and he grinds the venison with pork, about 1/3 of the weight of the venison. I usually then freeze the ground meat and use it for chili, hotdishes, seasoned sausage patties, tacos, etc. This year, after adding pork, we had about 70lbs of ground meat. I froze approx. 50lbs. in one pound packages and the other 20 lbs., I intend to make into venison jerky.
So far, I've made 10lbs of jerky. Here's how it's done. I divide the ground meat into 2lb balls. I mix the seasoning and cure with each ball. Then refrigerate anywhere from four hours to overnight.
I then place the seasoned ground meat into the jerky gun.
When the gun is full, I pump strips of ground meat onto dehydrator trays. I have an older American Harvest Dehydrator that came with four trays. It took about 2 1/2 lbs of meat to fill all four trays.
I then dehydrate the meat for approx. 2 hours. I'm sure each dehydrator is different so either follow your dehydrator manual or experiment. The meat should be stiff and dry with a jerky like consistency. One of my batches didn't seem quite done after two hours. It was soft and limp, so I ran it an extra hour to be sure it was done.
I store the jerky in Ziploc bags in the refrigerator. Although, I'm not sure how long it will last. The kids were eating it faster than I could bag it :)
Yum-tastico!!!! I love venison! Grew up on the stuff, and even went a huntin' with my dad when I was a little girl. ;) I miss vension. Enjoy! Thank you for the visual and step by step on how to make the jerky!
ReplyDeleteLooks delicious! We have not made any jerky yet. I need to pick up some spices soon.
ReplyDeleteHave a great night.
:)Vicki