Water amount for jerky seasoning
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I just received your Sweat Chipotle jerky seasoning and I’m really looking forward to making it. I’m going to use whole meat muscle and I’m not going to make the full 25lbs. I’m going to divide the batch down so I know how much seasoning to use per pound. My question is how much water do you use for the marinade? After soaking in the marinade I’m going to pat dry the meat dry. Do you recommend sprinkling more seasoning on the meat prior to loading the meat into the smoker? Thanks.
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Jonathon Team Blue Admin Walton's Employee Power User Kansas Dry Cured Sausagereplied to John Belvedere on last edited by Jonathon
@Retired-RailRoader Do you have a specific reason for patting it dry? I ask because I think you are going to remove a good portion of the seasoning when you pat it dry with a towel. I would follow the
instructions in the Jerky Post (https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/178/how-to-make-homemade-jerky-recipe) which are probably very similar to what you were planning on doing without patting it dry.However if you are wanting your product dryer when it goes into the smoker then I would skip adding the water all together and just “dust” it. To do this I would lay out the seasoning, with the correct amount of cure mixed in, in a container and then add the meat and drag it through until all sides were evenly coated, you might even want to sprinkle more on the top. Then put it in a bag or sealed container without any water for 12 hours and go to the smoker without patting it dry. You will still have the moisture of the meat interacting with the seasoning so you will get some penetration and you won’t have to pat it dry and worry about removing the seasoning from the meat.
Hope this helped, let us know if you have any more questions!
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Jonathon Thank you Jonathon, not patting it dry does make sense. The article you referred to in your reply for Thermal Processing states:
THERMAL PROCESSING
Lay seasoned jerky strips on jerky screens or smoke screens and place in smoker, smokehouse, oven, or dehydrator to cook.
130F for 1 hour (open damper on smoker)
145F for 2 hours (2/3 closed damper on smoker)
175F until internal meat temp of 160FMy question is why do you close the dampers down after the 1st hour? To me this seems counterproductive since isn’t the purpose of long heat for a long time to dry the jerky. With the dampers closed 2/3 of the way won’t that allow the moisture to remain in the smoker and not dry out the jerky. Thanks.
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Jonathon Team Blue Admin Walton's Employee Power User Kansas Dry Cured Sausagereplied to John Belvedere on last edited by
@Retired-RailRoader Good question! The reason we have the dampers open initially is to give it an initial drying to allow the smoke to adhere to the meat at this stage. We then close them down a little to prevent the meat from drying out too much too early. According to the USDA Website “After drying, bacteria become much more heat resistant” so we are trying to prevent creating heat resistant bacteria. Once the internal temperature of the meat is at 160°F you can open the dampers all the way and continue to cook it until your jerky has the desired level of dryness. Let us know if you have any other questions!
