Venison jerky, stick style

[Dave in AZ]

pr0wlunwoof said in Venison jerky, stick style:

Dave in AZ I love the poison message on the cure.

Lol yeah, my son gets in messing around with whatever I buy, learning to cook. Sure enough, the week after I bought that cure, he came and told me he would have tried using it as salt if I hadn’t preemptively labeled it! Got to be careful with that nitrite!

[pr0wlunwoof]

Dave in AZ I totally get it. Mine cant read yet so I have to keep it out of reach.

[cdavis]

mrobisr said in Venison jerky, stick style:

Dave in AZ said in Venison jerky, stick style:

the FSIS recommended moist cook up to 160 and THEN dry

What is really sad is that I have done jerky the old way for over 40 years, and no one has even been infected or made sick, but unfortunately all it takes is once to have a very bad day with E. coli. If the process doesn’t end up with the desired final product then what is the point of making it. Your review has me wondering if a vacuum-packed jerky could be sous vide at pasteurization time and temps and achieve the same pathogen kill benefits while having the desired texture of the final product.

This is a great question Dave in AZ or Jonathon does either of you have any input on this question

[Dave in AZ]

cdavis I don’t make anywhere near the jerky that Jon does. And this thick stick stuff is by nature gonna be more like a steak stick. I don’t know if sous vide is ever gonna give anything close, since jerky is by definition dried meat.

But I know I didn’t like my attempt to follow the FSIS guideline, going right up to 160f fast then drying, as much as all my prior slow dry. So I don’t know…maybe targeting a much lower temp but longer time, on their pathogen lethality table?

I just reread the jerky guideline document, and it does say you can do whatever lethality time/temp combo you want, so long as it complies with “Appendix A”, before drying. The appendix A is from FSIS Cooking Guideline for Meat and Poultry Products (Revised Appendix A) December, 2021

Some reasonable examples I might use next time, that I think would “cook” the meat less and give that dried rare meat texture, do exist. If we say 135 is the cutoff after which beef starts to lost the red/pink rare texture, then these would all work in a moist oven or SV, before drying:
130f Internal meat Temp, for 121 minutes
135f Internal meat Temp for 37 minutes.

So yeah, I do think 37 min or less once meat hits tem, is pretty reasonable. The hard thing is getting the jerky internal temp, or keeping SV or oven low enough that meat satys below 135f to keep that rare feel. But this is what I am going to do next time! Thx for the question, mrobisr and cdavis , it got me looking and finding a better solution

[cdavis]

Dave in AZ thanks for the reply.

[mrobisr]

Dave in AZ cdavis
So next time I do jerky I will dry as usual then vac seal and sous vide 130f for 3 hours and I should have the proper jerky texture and still be completely free from e. coli. For the record I have been doing my dry cure products like this if they include beef and haven’t had any textural issues. Flavors, presentation, and taste are still comparable to the raw products of the past. Yes, I actually took the chance and did a side-by-side test, one with raw and one with the pasteurized product.

[mrobisr]

Dave in AZ cdavis So next time I do jerky I will dry as usual then vac seal and sous vide 130f for 3 hours and I should have the proper jerky texture and still be completely free from e. coli. For the record I have been doing my dry cure products like this if they include beef and haven’t had any textural issues. Flavors, presentation, and taste are still comparable to the raw products of the past. Yes, I actually took the chance and did a side-by-side test, one with raw and one with the pasteurized product.

[Dave in AZ]

mrobisr said in Venison jerky, stick style:

Dave in AZ cdavis So next time I do jerky I will dry as usual then vac seal and sous vide 130f for 3 hours and I should have the proper jerky texture and still be completely free from e. coli.

That depends on what “dry as usual” means…
I guess I confused you by just talking about step 5 only without context. But the big point of the jerky guidelines is to say that the lethality treatment, step 5, has to be done BEFORE DRYING, on a moist product. THEN drying is step 6. If you slowly dry first, bacterial spores form a hard dry coating that lets them survive well above 160f, so then the pathogen lethality treatments don’t work.

Here I will just cut and paste a picture of their steps. You can surface dry the strips so they are tacky and will take smoke, and smoke for color, for less than 30min, then you heat treat while still moist inside, then you dry.

And to be clear, you can of course do whatever you want as a not-for-sale private citizen, and I’m not telling you that you MUST follow all this FSIS guide… we’re just having a discussion on how the gov says commercial producers must do it

I’ve read this thing and Appendix A like 10 times, and each time I find something new… complying as a commercial producer is a lot of work!

[mrobisr]

Dave in AZ No confusion at all I understand the guidelines perfectly just confusing the biltong requirements and forgot that it uses vinegar.

130f Internal meat Temp, for 121 minutes
135f Internal meat Temp for 37 minutes.

Unfortunately, this will not meet the requirements either. The meat must reach 160f then it can be reduced to 140-150f for drying. The high sugar recipe that Jon shows on the video, and I have had was very good and within the USDA standards, so maybe that is the only viable option at this point.

[mrobisr]

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