How to dry meat

Not every meat can be dry. Fits only the lean meat of wild and domestic animals and smoked breast of poultry.

If you want to dry the venison, it is very important to know how experienced the hunter has killed and butchered the animal, because of the wound and the skill of the butcher depends on your health. If when slaughtering, butchering or just dirty hands of the butcher fecal matter fall on the product, you run the risk of "catch" the toxic bacteria.

Also in the harvesting of wild game and pork should remember about such parasites as Trichinella. They can only be killed by prolonged freezing. Meat is not thicker than 12 inches should at least a month to lie at temperatures below 0oC. Freezing does not kill bacteria but only prevent them multiplying.

It is better to partially freeze any meat before cutting, so it will be easier to cut into equal thin strips. The old method of drying requires you to slice the meat along the grain, if you want to more tender meat – cut across.

Before drying , the meat can be marinated in brine, pickle or just pickle. If the marinade to add more than 1 teaspoon of salt per 1 kg of meat, this meat is salty is not considered. Dried jerky can be stored outside the refrigerator for a few weeks, in the fridge for up to 3 months. Unsalted dried meat spoils after 2-3 weeks even in the refrigerator. Dried pickled or salted with spices in a dry meat – jerky – not good for long term storage, but has a special pleasant taste.

For the brine take not less than 2 and ½ cups of salt for 3 liters of water, can also add any herbs and spices. Keep the meat in the brine at least a day.

If you are pickled or salted meat dry Ambassador, keep in th fridge. In brine can keep meat at room temperature. Marinated meat can be heated in the marinade before 72оС. Thus you will reduce the risk of infection by pathogenic bacteria. Cook at this temperature is about 5 minutes.

Dry the meat in the oven, laying it out strips on a baking sheet covered with foil at a distance of 1 cm from each other. Meat extracted from brine or marinade, it should be previously freed from liquid on the surface. The oven should be heated to 60oC and if you do not have the convection mode, the door must be ajar. Dried meat weighs ¼ the weight of the crude, it is flexible and not brittle. In this condition the meat is dried for 12 to 24 hours.

It is possible to dry meat in the fresh air, provided that the street is hot, dry but a bit windy weather. At night, meat, and dried fruit, you have to clean the house, so it is not soaked with dew. Street meat dries for 4 days, minimum, you have to carefully protect it from insect to pull fine cheesecloth, place it under the screen to dry the fruit. This is the most unsafe way.

It is not recommended to dry the meat in a microwave oven as it is impossible to maintain uniform heating.

The best way to dry meat is to use industrial dehumidifier. The only thing that you should consider in this case that the bottom trays are warmed more than the upper, so every hour there is a sense to rearrange them. Temperature, which is put on the dehumidifier is 90C for the first 15 minutes, 70 ° C the rest of the time and 60oC in the last 10 minutes.