Friday, December 28, 2012

Deer Burger and Jerky

The other day, as you who read the last post know, I made deer burger and jerky. Originally I had thought to keep the deer leg whole but I just don't have enough room in the freezer. My brother posted a Youtube video on facebook about adding bacon to your ground deer meat to make burger and I have plenty of bacon so decided to do it that way.
I got all the white skin off of it and it ground up really nice and easily. Every now and then I would throw in a hunk of bacon and keep grinding (the bacon had not been sliced yet and I used the fattier ends).
I ended up with 6 very generous pounds of deer burger. I also had a backstrap which I cut in half. The deer meat is all the darker meat on top of the freezer.

The rest I prepared as jerky. I have several jerky kits (Eastman Outdoors) that I bought last year after deer season when they went on sale, plus I had regular jerky mix that came with my jerky maker. One of the jerky kits was for 3 lbs, that was the BBQ one the other pound or so I did with the regular jerky kits from the jerky maker.
These are some of the BBQ jerky before it was dried.
I had to drag out the old brown dehydrator for the regular jerky. These were made before they came with fans so it takes a lot longer to dehydrate anything.
This isn't even all of it. The two darker pieces on top were the only two pieces of the regular jerky that were done when I took this picture. They are all done now though. I have some in a canister and the rest in a Ziplock in the refrigerator.

So this was a few days ago. I love being home! But you all know how fast the days go when you are home. I am trying to get things done that haven't been done for far too long. Went through the bedroom and collected a Salvation Army bag full of junk. Got the shades off the lights and scrubbed them clean, etc. etc. Today I got to town to do a little shopping though we didn't eat much since most of last week was ham eating week. I did however get a deal on a box of smoker chips. They had a box that had 4 different big bags of wood chips- cherry, apple, mesquite and hickory plus it had a DVD and a metal wood chip holder for $9. Can't wait to try the cherry and apple wood!
When I got home I finally got another batch of wine going. This will be more of the Welch's grape wine only this will be a 3 gallon batch.
So that is all that has been going on this week. I am still practicing the violin every day...some day... a few years from now...I'll be good at it :)

10 comments:

  1. Your old dehydrator is the one I have. It isn't as good as the ones with the fans, but it works. I used to make a lot of jerky with mine, but I haven't done that in years.

    ReplyDelete
  2. jerky isnt that big here in australia but hubby and I have decided our next purchase will be a deydrator so I may try and make some. Keep going with your violin im sure your better than you think

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You can make jerky in any oven as well and actually if you make pork or chicken jerky "the experts" recommend that you make it in the oven.

      Delete
  3. What do you do with the jerky? I mean, how do you eventually eat it? Does it have to be re-hydrated? How would you rate this as a method of food-preservation - compared for instance to freezing?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jerky to us is nothing but a snack. We don't use it any other way. But it is a darn GOOD snack. Everybody loves jerky. I suppose if you needed to it could be re-hydrated and used in another way if you made jerky from strips of mean instead of ground but nobody that I know of ever uses jerky that way.

      Delete
  4. Looks real good. Never made jerky. The dehydrator I have came with a caulk gun-like thing for making jerky. May have to try that sometime!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah that is what I have too for making jerky. I have to say that though it is faster, I made nicer pieces of jerky when I made them on a plastic cutting board and then flipped them over onto the dehydrator. The jerky tool thing tends to spit them out ripply instead of flat. I guess if you grind the meat enough it would come out flat but I hate doing a second grind because it comes out so mushy.

      Delete
  5. Hi becky, how are things going? You sure know how to make a person hungry. Think I will go grill some sausages.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I got so busy I didn't make any jerky this year...gonna have to make time for it though! Thanks for the post.

    ReplyDelete