#4 Jerky

I've been wanting to make jerky for a long time. About a month ago I got myself a new jerky gun...I got this one on Amazon. It is huge...but that ended up being a really big time saver. My hubby got a nice buck this past November and we had 1/2 of the venison ground into hamburger. 22 lb. I'm not really a big fan of venison hamburger. So I knew I had to figure out a way to use it. So what to do? Make jerky. I have had an Excalibur food dehydrator for a few years now, so it made sense to now finally use it for jerky. This is where I got my Excalibur..I love it! I've used it for so many different food items. Right now I'm incubating yogurt in it (a future post) and a few days ago I used it to rise my hamburger bun dough. So it's getting a workout these days. It will be used for a lot of the recipes throughout this year....anyway, on to the jery.

Ground Venison Jerky

4 pounds ground venison
4 packages of Nesco meat cure/seasoning packets- original flavor. Got it here. But you can get it local too.
I have found many recipes for making jerky with your own flavors and seasonings, but for the first time I decided to use the Nesco packets.

Mix the contents of the packets completely into the meat.

 

Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. This lets the cure do it's work.

 

Next day.....load up your ground, cured, seasoned venison into the gun and arrange on dehydrator trays so they do not touch. I used the snack stick attachment and used a paring knife to cut them into sticks. I had to use my fingers to form the ends a little nicer after the cut. 

 

I dehydrated mine at 155 degrees for about 5- 5 1/2 hours. But it will vary depending on your own dehydrator. I did rotate my trays a few times, but it's not completely neccessary with an Excalibur.

This is how they turned out. After taking them out of the dehydrator, I single layered them (not touching) onto a baking sheet and popped them into a 275 degree oven for 10 minutes. This is just an extra safety precaution. And highly recommended to kill anything that might be there. The point is to get them to an internal temp of 160 degrees. After taking them out of the oven I blotted them with paper towel to get any fat that had beaded up. I decided to store mine in the freezer. I will just take out a handful at a time and store in the fridge to use up when a high protein snack is desired.