@yakkoTDI

/giphy need more junk in the trunk

@yakkoTDI
not sure you can get the trunk into the dehydrator…

@yakkoTDI Or you could take out of the trunk all of those bodies and get rid of them in the woods somewhere. If you dehydrate them I wouldn’t get rid of them in the river though. I suspect bears would like them better than fish. Oh wait. Alligators. If you live around them I bet they’d love body snacks.

@Kidsandliz Alligators like them? I live in Florida I think we have a couple here and a couple there and some more over there. Some in the linen closet, a few more in the mailbox, etc.

@RogerWilco My meat has been dried out for years.

@Trinityscrew No worries mate…comes with a jerky gun.

@RogerWilco so is this one an actual good deal or is there something I can spend a few extra bucks on for more bang for my buck?

@RogerWilco sounds like you’ve got a lot of experience making jerky. What’s your preferred “cure” style and ingredients? In particular about nitrites or not? I noticed the mainstream pre-made cures almost always include sodium nitrite, which is a preserving ingredient. You can get ones that don’t, or make your own which is preferable because you have better control over the Sweet/salty balance and ingredients.

@RogerWilco I have been making jerky almost weekly now with one of these nesco dehydrators. Am on the search for a square one with a back fan.

What brand are you using?

I am wanting one with the grid very small because I am using brisket sliced as thin as it can be. The butcher has been slicing it for me, sometimes it gets stuck to the nesco plastic rings.

@qazxto it’s a good deal starting out for sure. If you get to the point where you’re using 20-30lbs of meat per batch you’ll need something larger.

@pmarin I don’t use pre made cures. Most any marinade I use is based from worcestershire, soy sauce or teriyaki or a combination along with an assortment of seasonings/spices. I typically am making either beef or pork jerky nowadays using eye of the round or pork loin. The amount of salt or season salt won’t require anything else as a preservative as long as most of the fat is trimmed away before dehydrating. Excess fat is what will cause jerky to go rancid. I also vacuum seal individual bags. Jerky lasts for about a year without any issues. Mine typically is gone a lot quicker than that though.

@Dakini I have a LEM 10 tray mighty bite. Sticking can be avoided if you flip the jerky halfway through the cook time before it starts to stick. If you’re using sugar based marinades it’s pretty much required

@craigcush Right, we have used ours intermittently for years. Went through a phase of making apple and banana chips, dried herbs from the garden, this and that. THEN for Christmas we received a package of these https://basjerky.com

Oh my god, this jerky is like crack. Warning, the so called “mild” will burn your mouth for hours, I started buying non-spicy, and I don’t mind a little heat.

But we were going through a bag a week. Too damned expensive for that. So, I decided to attempt a copycat recipe. And while it does not taste exact, mine is gluten free for my gf friends AND when I actually compared, I ended up liking mine better. Less sugar.

Now I have a set recipe and a butcher that will stand there for hours slicing beef brisket untrimmed (the fat is the BEST) super thin and give it to me for 6.99 a pound.

I have another batch in the dehydrator as I type this.

@craigcush @Dakini Oh PLEASE share your copycat recipe! I saw several people mention getting super-thin sliced by real butcher (there are still a few but hard to find in the prepackaged Walmartization of food distribution). I will give it a try (not at Walmart…) And lately the Walmartization has expanded to Krogerization which has swallowed up most of our local stores.

Interesting that you mention the FAT, as this conflicts with @RogerWilco who said the fat is what goes rancid. I think both might be correct depending on cure and dryness and thickness.

My wife tried some batches of jerky when we first got a dehydrator, but one batch (probably the last one we tried and got fed up with it) grew white mold fairly quickly. Looking back I attribute this to probably sliced too thick and not getting sufficiently dried, so it both didn’t absorb enough of the marinade, and also probably had too much moisture remaining. What do you think?

@craigcush @pmarin @RogerWilco

Well this is my recipe, I’ve thought about ordering another bag of that other to compare, but honestly we love this so much why bother.

Oh, and yes, the fat will go bad, we keep it in the fridge and it doesn’t last long between the two of us.

Beef Jerky:

1 lb very thin sliced beef brisket (I prefer untrimmed)

2 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon red chile flakes or more to taste
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon Lemon Juice
1 Tablespoon Ginger Juice
1/4 cup Braggs Amino Acids
1 1/2 Tablespoon water
1 1/2 Tablespoon Sugar
1/8 tsp. Anchovy paste or 1 Tablespoon of fish sauce)
1 Tablespoon rice vinegar
1/2 teaspoon beef better than boullion
1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

Mix up marinade and blend well together. Marinate beef slices in sauce overnight, dehydrate at 160 for 7-8 hours. Keep in fridge or freeze.

Hint…I spray the dryer racks with spray olive oil, when the beef is cut super thin it can get pretty stuck to the rack.

Also, I bag the beef up in 1 lb bags and freeze them. Then I make the marinade up in large quantities and freeze that in snack sized plastic bags.

and oh, the ginger juice is something else I make. We have a soda stream and I make my own ginger ale with the ginger juice and agave syrup…

Ginger Juice:

Take a big hunk of ginger and chop it up, then blend it. Per 1 cup of chopped ginger, add 2 cups water. Bring to a boil then boil for 5 minutes. Bring down to a simmer for 10. Then take it off the heat and let sit for 20. Then you drain off the liquid via wire mesh strainer, then place in cheesecloth and squeeze out the remainder of the juice.

@awk Me too. I might have to put some apple sauce in there- I didn’t know it was a thing.

@therealjrn they sure are

@walarney Use your GD pronouns, er, prepositions! -Truman Capote

@kostia It would probably taste stringy when you’re done.

@kostia yes. You can. You just pull the trays out. There are also a lot of mods you can do to theae with 3D printing to make them better at drying the filamement.

@kostia yep, used a Westinghouse one for this exactly, add a turntable inside and you can print while keeping it dry too

@Chronicle Some of them if you take the trays out the whole structure collapses, but this one looks like it has its own body apart from the trays. Gonna see if my teenager (it’s my printer but he’s the main user) is interested.

edited: no it doesn’t

@bluebeatpete What do you do with whole dried bananas?

@bluebeatpete @sammydog01 maybe he’s an astronaut?

I would love to have a freeze drier.

@sammydog01 They end up like shrunken gummy bananas. I let them get super ripe, so the dried ones are really sweet.

@bluebeatpete That sounds appalling.

@sammydog01 They are definitely a polarizing snack.

@Joedetroit Sounds good- I’ll put it on my list.

@Joedetroit I found a video for zucchini in a ninja foodie. In case anyone bought one of those here and wants to give it a shot.

@davevinci Just like a caulking gun, but you fill it with ground meat, pull the trigger, and extrude 6" tube-shaped portions that dry into “beef sticks.” Handy & fun!

@Russianspi Yup I was thinking the same thing. seems wasteful but that would be the most cost-effective if you wanted 8 or 12 trays. Of course by then you’d be spending up to $120, bringing it up to the price of other perhaps better options. Though a quality brand dehydrator with square pull-out trays would still cost a lot more than that, but would be much better in the long run.

@Bendalyre you dehydrate pea soup and eat it as trail mix? How do you keep it from dripping down through the tray openings?

Edit. I watched the video. It comes with a fruit roll sheet to dry liquids.

@Bendalyre @qazxto I saw that too. Although I also read you can use parchment paper, at least for the fruit roll-ups. I already have that.

@qazxto I use silicone dehydrating sheets, made by bright kitchen, theyre popular for their tall lip. I rehydrate the soup in a jet boil trail stove. Works quickly and well.

@werekong 500W * 24h = 12kwh in CA, that’s ~$3-4. Elsewhere probably $1-2

Also it’s probably not running at full power the whole time.

@therealsutano Doesn’t sound like much, but then you would have to factor in the cost of the fruit and also how much fruit is dehydrated each time.

@therealsutano @werekong Yes, it is definitely not pulling full power the whole time, only when the thermostat triggers the heating element. Otherwise, only the fan is running. And fruit takes longer to dry, contained a lot more water. So a large batch uses about the same amount of electricity as a small one. I ran a Kill-A-Watt meter on my machine, and a 22-hour drying cycle cost me about $1.30. I buy a case of fresh apples at Costco, and make enough cinnamon rings to last a month or two at a time (they keep fine in zip-loc bags in the fridge).

@omegamonkey The bogo banner is for today’s t-shirt sale. It won’t work on Friday’s dehydrator sale.