The venison jerky is made. By the time Vince trimmed up all the meat, I ground the meat and weighed it and bagged it up, Saturday was pretty much gone and it was too late to start the dehydrating so we stuck it all in the fridge and got started on seasoning and extruding the jerky this morning.
Vince Making Jerky
And a little dog is always right under our feet when there’s food involved! You never know with someone might drop a little morsel.
Speck
Last year Vince bought the Weston Original Jerky Gun and this was the first time he used it and he was impressed. It was easy to use, easy to clean and the jerky made from ground meat was delicious and easier to eat than traditional sliced meat jerky.
Dehydrator
By the time he was done, we had used all but two of the shelves in the dehydrator. I love the Excalibur Dehydrator and I think I’m going to go ahead and order a second one because in the summer, I need two of them running. I kept thinking I wasn’t going to order a second one because at least nine months out of the year, it sits on the shelf but last year, I dehydrated so many tomatoes for making tomato powder to add to gravy and soup; I dehydrated a ton of jalapeno peppers for jalapeno powder. I dehydrated okra that we’ve used for snacking and for soups. I’ve dehydrated onions and probably this week will dehydrate a bunch of chopped green onions. We looked at the Cabela’s dehydrator online today but I think we’re going to go with the Excalibur again.
Jerky
We made four different flavors of jerky and I think we liked the hot & spicy one the best. From 10 pounds of meat, we ended up with between 4 and 5 pounds of jerky. There’s still a good bit of venison in the freezer so very soon, we’ll be making more jerky using this method.
shirley bruner says
My husband makes his jerky with the same gun. and we have the same dehydrator….i took tips from you. hahaha i’ll have to try some tomato and pepper powders. i guess you just get it really dry and crush it up? interesting.
JudyL says
I get it all dry, then put it in the blender to turn it into powder. When grinding the jalapenos . . wear a mask!
Judy D in WA says
Since seeing your facebook picture, I had to get ground meat out of the freezer. Which seasonings do you use? Or do you make your own?
I’ve been lazy and bought the seasonings but I want to try mixing up my own one of these days.
Sheryl says
We found my excalibur on craigslist but maybe you’d better not introduce Vince to that if he hasn’t already discovered it. Don is a craigslist fan! or should that be fanatic?
Sherrill says
How long did the jerky take to dehydrate? I did some bananas and they were AWFUL!
Karen says
I have the Excalibur also and love it. It’s so easy to clean.
Connie says
We used to dehydrate tomatoes and just snack on them. YUM Really intensified the flavor.
CindyM says
Other than easier to store, is there an advantage to having tomato and pepper powders–instead of just drying them and keeping them whole? I’ve just never thought of grinding/blending them to powder.
Diane says
So what is the texture like on the extruded jerky? Regular jerky has been axed from my diet since it is just too hard but I’m guessing with it ground and extruded it would be much easier? That sounds interesting. Oh! Would it be like a Slim Jim sort of without the outer casing? Kind of a dried sausage texture?
Ok too many questions for you I’m going to investigate.