Lake Neuron

This week’s Blogger Idol topic is “I love…” After pontificating about Christmas gifts, travel and New Year’s resolutions in previous Blogger Idol posts, I figured I would spare you some pseudo-intellectual blither about love. I could post another excerpt from my recent speed-written novel (like I did for “First Dates”), but my characters are still romantically giddy; they’re approaching love, but it would be wrong to say they’ve gotten there.

Instead, I will tell you what’s in my dehydrator as I write this.

I love beef jerky. Yes, I realize that the English word “love” is overused, and it lacks the nuances of the various Greek words (philos, eros, agape). It’s flippant to talk about loving beef jerky. But I think I’ll do it anyway.

I first bought a dehydrator some years ago, and switched to a much better model a few years later. I occasionally make banana chips — and ought to do it more often — and I will sometimes dry half of an onion when I only need part of it for a recipe. But what I most often use my dehydrator for is jerky.

Jerky has grown in popularity in recent years due to low-carb, high-protein diets. Actually, if properly made, it’s also low in fat — fat spoils before meat does, so for home jerky-making, you always want to choose the leanest possible cut of meat and trim it as well as possible.

There are two main kinds of jerky: whole muscle jerky, which is made from slices of meat, and ground meat jerky, which is made from seasoned ground meat which is shaped into strips or sticks. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages.

Ground meat jerky is easier to make, and it doesn’t require overnight marinating. You normally just mix the ground meat with a commercial seasoning-and-cure blend, and maybe rest it for a few hours in the fridge to allow the flavors to permeate. You have control of the size and shape of the pieces, and you can make them all standard in size and appearance (especially if you have a jerky gun, a little plastic gadget that works like a caulking gun). The jerky is not as tough or chewy as whole muscle jerky. I highly recommend Hi Mountain Jerky Seasoning, which comes in numerous flavors, for ground meat jerky, and it’s terrific with whole muscle jerky as well. You can get it at Wal-Mart Supercenters, other stores and online.

I tend to use commercial seasonings for ground meat jerky, because it’s especially important to use cure when you’re working with ground meat. Many types of contamination occur in the presence of oxygen. Those organisms tend to live on the surface and are killed when you sear the outside of a piece of meat, which is why people can eat rare steak with no ill effect. But when meat is ground, the oxygen-feeding organisms are distributed throughout, which is why ground beef needs to be handled more carefully than whole muscle meat.

Follow the directions for any jerky cure or recipe carefully — cure contains not only salt and sugar but sodium nitrite. Nitrites are found in many processed meats. They not only help kill harmful bacteria but they fix a pleasant red or reddish-brown color. They’re important — but you don’t want to overdo them because they can be carcinogenic in large amounts.

The salt in a jerky cure is important — it’s there not only for flavor but as a preservative. Unfortunately, low-sodium jerky is not a practical option.

Many extension offices and the USDA now recommend heating meat to 160 degrees before drying it. My dehydrator has a top temperature setting of 155 degrees, which is what I use for jerky. I have never taken the extra step of pre-cooking, nor have I ever had a problem with my jerky (or anyone else’s). But I wanted to be sure and pass this recommendation along. Please don’t sue me.

Whole muscle jerky has the tougher, chewier texture many people want and expect from jerky — although, if you’re going to store and handle your jerky properly (store it in the fridge), you don’t have to dry it rock-hard, a common mistake. Whole muscle meat, cut with the grain 1/4 inch thick, can be “marinated” in dry seasoning and cure like Hi Mountain’s, or it can be marinated in a traditional liquid marinade. This is fun because you can experiment with your own flavor combinations. (Don’t forget a little touch of liquid smoke, unless you’ll be drying your jerky in a smoker. People expect jerky to taste smoky.) I have added cure (in the form of Morton’s Tender Quick) to marinade, but I’ve also made whole muscle jerky without a nitrite-based cure, and it’s turned out just fine. Your mileage may vary, however, so please don’t sue me.

I hadn’t made whole muscle jerky in a while. One of our pressmen at work is a hunter, and he’s brought in several batches of whole muscle venison jerky lately, and that got me thinking about jerky-making. The venison jerky was fine, but I generally stick to beef when I’m making my own. I look for the leanest cut I can on find that’s on sale. (In any case, homemade jerky is much cheaper, ounce for ounce, than storebought.) This time, I used the Hi Mountain dry seasoning and didn’t try to doctor the flavors or add any heat. I’ve sampled a bit of the warm, nearly-done jerky, and it tastes fantastic.

I picked this topic so that I could avoid bloviating, and it looks like I’ve bloviated anyway. Well, to use a famous quote (usually, but not definitively, attributed to Pascal), “This letter is so long because I didn’t have time to make it shorter.”