Hi you're in Steve's kitchen and today is part of the meat series
we are going to make something very simple jerky one of my favorites very
expensive to buy if you buy pre-made in the shops but it's so easy to make
in fact realistically you just need some good beef and a little bit of salt
but it wouldn't be jerky if we didn't add some flavors and spices
now if you just come down here I'll show you the beef that we going to need we
call this
silver side I believe in the US they call it
round and this is a fairly lean piece we've cut the meat
off or I asked my butcher to trim all the fat off sorry
and I'm going to be cutting this
beef into slices properly about three quarter of an inch across so what we do
I'll just show you what this looks like just slice it through I'm going across the
grain
and that means the grain on this meat is running in this direction
but if you look at that beef it has a lovely marbling
of fat in there and that not only is going to give us lots of flavour it
makes
really good beef jerky so we're going to slice up
this beef I'm not going to use this whole joint here about a kilo or two pounds
for this recipe if you want to follow along
so I'm just going to go and continue to cut this piece of beef
up into strips the next thing I'm going to do
is lay this piece of beef out flat and to make our jerky I want to cut this
into strips probably about a half an inch
long so we end up with beautiful strips
of beef like that so there you see
I have all my beef sliced up and ready
to cure now as I said you could actually sprinkle salt
on to this it would probably take a tablespoon or two to coat this
in salt and that will draw the moisture off I'm not using salt in this recipe
what I am using is a light soy sauce which has a
high salt content in it so I'm using this to draw the moisture
out of our meat so the mix I'm going to use now has the right content of salt to
draw the moisture out but the spices and herbs I put in
are down to you you can copy what I'm doing you can add other spices and herbs in
and just have some fun with the different flavours so
we're going to take our beef now just going to pop this into a glass bowl now it needs to be
either
an earthenware, glass or plastic bowl don't use a metallic bowl
now I like the flavor that soy sauce adds and as I said to you
it also gives me that saltiness that I need so I've just popped
half a cup of soy sauce in there I've got a couple tablespoons
of soft brown sugar just to add some sweetness
lets put a teaspoon of onion salt in there as well
and at least a teaspoon of cracked black pepper
I have some dried chilli flakes as well just to give a little bit of spice I'm going to
sprinkle some of
that on there as well and why not I'm going to a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce
in there as well
now we need to coat the meat over with this so best thing really is to get your
hands in there
and start to turn that meat over get a good coating
then we want the salts to do their work
the salts are going to draw some of the moisture out of this meat before we cure it
So I'm going to pop it in the fridge overnight about eight hours
and that will allow some of the water to come out the beef
good morning and that beef has been soaking in all those flavors overnight
come have a look
all the liquid that's come off of there and I did give it a couple of turnovers to
make sure it was completely coated it's absorbed all that wonderful flavor
now I'm going to show you how to make this with out any dehydrator it's the way I
normally make it you don't need any complicated equipment
all we're going to need is some nice open airy racks like this
we're going to lay our pieces of beef out in the past I have taken the beef
put little sterilized paper clips and hung them up in a breezy area and that's
a way of letting them dry
all you're trying to do is to make sure there is
airflow any of the moisture is coming off this meat there's
airflow and it's being taken away so take the strips of beef
now and we're just going to lay them out
on our cookie rack now there needs to be space between each piece of beef
as well we want complete airflow around the beef
so you can see the way they're lined up now if you had these hung on little
paper clips
in a nice breezy area they would dry out very quickly
now if you're worried about the drips from the juice then you need to put
something underneath
now I've got a place in my back room here where I can stand these
and then all I need is airflow and I'm going to suggest that if you just got a regular
household fan you can turn it on a low setting
and let it blow across the meat now as that airflow goes
across the meat its taking away the moisture and you will be really
surprised how quickly this beef jerky
dries out one of these batches I'm spicing up a little bit
got white paper in here coriander in here
this batch here I'm just going to put some white pepper little bit of extra white
pepper over the top and the coriander seeds as well
so I got two different flavors just to experiment with
and they are ready to go and dry
so with a simple household domestic fan like that I'm just blowing across the
surface of the beef
and we can always tilt up the rack a little bit like this but you'd be
surprised how quickly
this beef is going to dry out
now it's been another three hours five hours in total and you'll see the beef
jerky has dried out
even further and it's quite stiff you can pick it up it's starting to dry out quite
well
now look at the colors now the beef is going a nice dark color
now it's important wherever you are in the world that the humidity will change
here in Melbourne we are quite dry
if you're in a country where the humidity is high you are going to want
to actually do this in the warmer months
it's been a little short of 24 hours but I want to show you now what's happened
to my beef jerky
overnight so just come with me take a look just how dry
this beef jerky has gone now it's pretty firm its dehydrated as much as I like I
like it a little extra moisture
let's get this back in the kitchen I'll show you what it looks like
so you can see now just how stiff that
beef jerky has become I've got a piece of the peppery jerky
here and I will just cut that through it is beautiful and tender
you can see in the center there hopefully that's going to
focus now I'm going to cut myself a slice of this
off that is ready now you can continue to dry this a little further if you like
your beef
jerky much drier but I like it like this
and it'll probably be gone pretty damn quickly so
let's give this a try
it's chewy I'll just swallow that normally
I chew that for ages and get all flavor out of it now
you can experiment with the different seasoning on this you could even
add a sprinkling of extra salt on as well but I can tell you
isn't difficult to make it tastes delicious it's a much cheaper way
of buying it in the stores so if you decide to give this a go
tell me what seasoning you use comment down below and share some pictures
across
to me on Facebook or Google+ I'd love to hear how it goes
anyway be good thank you for watching again share the love give this one a
thumbs up and I'll see you
in the next episode so you know what I'm going to be nibbling on for the rest
of the day
beef jerky and I hope you've enjoyed the little meat series that we've been doing
I'll leave a link up here
to it and to another video as well I'd love to hear your comments
take care and see you the next video be good