How to make jerky at home - how to dry meat properly.

It is advisable to make dried meat in the cold season, when it is cool outside and indoors. This kind of meat is easy to prepare, but the cooking process is quite lengthy and requires some time so as not to try it ahead of time.

Ingredients: carnation, allspice, coriander, ground red pepper, Bay leaf, meat, salt, caraway, ground black pepper

Dried meat is prepared at home without any harmful additives. The only preservative is salt, and it does not kill microorganisms, but only stops their development. This means that you can become infected with worms or salmonella that the animal suffered from. Therefore, meat for drying must be taken fresh and 100% from a healthy animal, in stores where it is checked, and not in spontaneous markets.

You can dry chicken and turkey fillets, pork and young beef; veal is not suitable because it has not had time to acquire the desired taste. You need to approach pork with great caution, as it contains the most parasites. There are fewer of them in beef.

Content

1 How to properly salt meat for drying.
- 1.1 How to prepare brine for meat.
- 1.2 Salting meat for drying.
2 How to dry meat.

How to properly salt meat for drying.

An important component for a tasty final product is properly prepared brine.

How to prepare brine for meat.

We prepare a strong brine from rock salt (by no means extra, the result will not be the same) with the addition of bay leaf, allspice, and cloves.For brine you will need 4 or 4.5 tbsp per 1 liter of water. spoons with a heap of salt. Boil it for 1-2 minutes, then set it aside and cool. The brine should be such that a raw, fresh chicken egg floats (the blunt end with a diameter of 2.5 cm is visible). When the brine has cooled to room temperature, throw away the spices and put the liquid itself in the refrigerator. To salt meat, the brine must be very cold.

Some housewives use only sea salt for salting, citing the fact that it does not dissolve well in water, which means that the meat will absorb less of it than ordinary table salt.

For salting, we use ceramic or glass dishes; iron dishes oxidize, and this is harmful to both health and the quality of corned beef.

Salting meat for drying.

First, we prepare the meat for salting: wash it and dry it, cut off the films and fat layer from pork and beef.

Dip the fresh meat pulp into cold brine.

There should be brine, the more, the better. The meat should float freely in it. We cover the meat with a lid and put it in a cold place for 1-3 days, depending on the size of the pieces of meat; if the pieces are large, then it will take more time for salting. Don't forget to turn it in the pan several times a day.

How to dry meat.

After 1-3 days, take the meat out of the brine, dry it and put it under pressure on an inclined surface for 1 hour so that the brine flows out, then dip it in a towel to remove all the liquid. If the piece of meat is thick, cut it lengthwise into 2 or several strips, so it will dry out faster. Then we rub the meat with dry ground spices, and also roll it on all sides.Spices can be different (black pepper, allspice and chili, coriander, cumin, cloves) at the discretion of the housewife, but among them there must be ground red pepper, which has preservative properties. It is better to take spices whole, not ground, and grind them before use in a special mill or grind them in a mortar, so they will not lose their aroma.

Wrap the meat with spices in clean gauze, parchment or bandage, put it in a bowl, cover with a lid and keep in the refrigerator on the bottom or middle shelf for 1 week.

Then we take the meat out of the pan, remove the gauze in which the meat was, rub it again with spices, wrap it in clean gauze or other material and tie it with thread, making loops by which we hang it in a well-ventilated place.

Such a place could be a cool kitchen in which we hang meat from the ceiling. You can dry it on the balcony, with the window slightly open, if it is late autumn or winter. The ideal option is a cool, dry place with a draft. If there is no ventilated cool room, then you need to keep the meat in a draft for at least a few days, and then keep it in the refrigerator on the bottom shelf for at least 1-2 weeks, maximum a month, turning it constantly. Jerky chicken and turkey are ready faster - after a few days of drying, but pork and beef will require the entire specified period. It should be noted that the meat will decrease in size and weight during drying: 1.5 kg of fresh meat will yield 800-900 g of dried meat.

You can store this delicious meat preparation for as long as you like in the refrigerator.

Home-made dried meat, moderately spicy and salty, is a real delicacy.We cut it into thin transparent slices and serve it as an appetizer with an aperitif, cognac, dry red wine or beer during a home feast or outdoors.

See also video: Homemade jerky - recipe.