Fed up with the price of Jerky, I decided to try Reggie's receipie. I bought the American Harvest dehydrator (other models rely on convection alone, but this has a hair dryer core to it that speeds up the drying).
First of all, unless you get the 2 additional trays, you can only make about 1.8 kg. Forget about 2.5 unless you slice thickly.
I made a batch earlier using Reggie's exact instructions. I marinated for 24 hours which unfortuantely made for super salty jerky. More than 2 pieces sent you running for water. Still ate most of it.
This xmas break I had a bit more time and decided to try again. I substituted some Knorr hickory marinade for the teriyaki sauce which I thought made things too sweet & sticky for my liking. I also only marinated for 10 hours which seems to have taken the salt content down to acceptable levels. I'd still like to reduce it further.
I went to the local Safeway for meat which I know is not the cheapest source of meat. I looked for flank steak but it turns out that the rouladen pre-sliced meat was cheaper per kg than almost everyhting else, plus had the advantage of being presliced. I think it was $13/kg, and my latest batch had about 2 kg.
Being the accounting nerd I am, here's how I figure this cost works out to be:
Meat 33.74
Smoke 3.29
Soysauce 2.00
Marinade 3.13
Worchester 1.53
Spices 4.00
Total cost = 47.69 for about 2,000g of jerky. Or about $2.38 per 100g. Pretty good savings, since your mystery meat Oberto from Wal Mart is about $7/100g.
Thanks Reg,
