Ground Jerky through the dakota stuffer?
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I have had some success and some failure with the dakota stuffer making pressed ground jerky. Do I need to add a binder when mixing the jerky seasonings and doing ground meat? They seem to not get tacky and won’t press. I did some Habanero BBQ summer sausage seasoning and they pressed out great, I am assuming there is some binder in the sausage mix? Do the jerky seasonings have binder in them? I am assuming not but not sure. Do you increase or decrease the seasoning mix for pressed jerky, I used some Colorado Jerky seasoning and it came out very salty. Thanks in Advance. Some picks of my converted Camp Chef pellet smoker and some of my projects!
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processhead Power User Regular Contributors Smoker Build Expert Bowl Choppers Nebraska Veteran Team Camoreplied to BrianM 0 on last edited by processhead
BrianM 0 I can’t speak from personal experience since I only make whole muscle jerky.
With any ground product that you are basically extruding without a casing, I think you would want to make sure you get very good protein extraction when you mix the ground meat with your seasoning/salt/cure. The physical mixing is what allows the salt to extract the protein from the meat and give you a good sticky mix.
Adding a binder wouldn’t hurt anything, and sometimes pre mixed seasoning add a binder already, but you need to read the ingredients on the label.Hopefully some of the folks with hands-on experience with chime in.
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My guess is not enough fat to get good protein extraction. I usually do re-structured jerky with 93/7 ground beef. I wait for it to go on clearance and buy it all. Have had great results with it. After watching for quite a while, I couldn’t find any 93/7 on clearance. The last time I did it, I used eye of round. I trimmed all the fat off, ground and mixed as usual. I could not get any protein extraction and get my mince sticky. I realized that trimming all the fat off was a mistake. You need to have some in there.
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cdavis Masterbuilt Canning Kamado Joes Regular Contributors Power User Sous Vide Oklahoma Team Camoreplied to BrianM 0 on last edited by
BrianM 0 your sausages look great. Congrats and welcome aboard. Glad to have you here
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I have had good luck with 93/7. I do use a binder (sure gel) when I do re-structured jerky. Other than that, only thing I can think of is the mix not being cold enough.
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glen Regular Contributors Team Grey Sous Vide Canning Dry Cured Sausage Masterbuilt Power User Meat Hack Winner Veteran Kansasreplied to Grimpuppy on last edited by
Grimpuppy I started using sure gel in restructured jerky around 5 years ago, never looked back.
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glen Regular Contributors Team Grey Sous Vide Canning Dry Cured Sausage Masterbuilt Power User Meat Hack Winner Veteran Kansasreplied to BrianM 0 on last edited by
BrianM 0 I use Sure Cure, hold overnight then mix in about 2/3 the amount of Sure Gel that is called for on the additive chart just before extruding.
