Post Your Favorite Jerky Marinade

[gwpercle]

For the past two or three years I have been experimenting with marinades and trying out different methods. Have discovered I don't like dry cures (like Hi Mountain Cure) and prefer a liquid marinade and teriyaki flavored. This one has a good balance of teriyaki-soy-Worcestershire-liquid smoke, not too sweet and not too hot.
Spices are always to taste, and can be modified as you like.
This makes enough to marinate 5-6 pounds of venison , I filled 10 trays using 2 dehydrator's, so cut in half for 2 1/2 to 3 lbs. of meat.

BASIC JERKY MARINADE
1 - 10 oz. bottle Kikkoman regular soy sauce
1 - 11.8 bottle Kikkoman Teriyaki Baste and Glaze (it's just thicker than regular sauce)
1/2 - cup Worcestershire sauce (lea & Perrin's)
1/4 - cup Liquid Smoke ( I used hickory )
1/2 - cup Honey or cane syrup ( Steen's)
1 - cup Pineapple Juice
juice from 1 or 2 Lemons (I grow Meyer lemons in my back yard)
3-5 teaspoons garlic powder ( to taste)
3-5 teaspoons onion powder ( to taste)
3 - heaping Tablespoons brown sugar (light or dark)
1 - teaspoon red pepper flakes ( it will not be too hot, you can barely taste it)
1 - teaspoon Accent
1 - teaspoon Adolph's Meat Tenderizer

This is the basic marinade that spices can added to suit :
1 tea. cayenne will add some heat.
I like black pepper so I usually add 1 tea. of black (no red). Some can't have black pepper or don't like it .
1 tea. of your favorite Cajun spice mix, or steak seasoning or whatever you like would spice it up.

This is my best so far now ....show me yours.

Gary

[lancem]

One bottle of Claude's Barbeque Brisket Marinade sauce and a half a bottle of your favorite flavor liquid smoke, marinade overnight. In a large shaker I mix equal amounts of black pepper, dried ground garlic, dried ground onion, a smaller portion of cayenne pepper, and an equal amount of crushed red pepper, I like spicy.

Pull the meat out of the marinade and place on a flat surface, I usually cover the counter with butcher paper for easy clean up, and sprinkle well with the dry mix and pat in, do both sides if you like, place in the dehydrator and wait.

Personally if the marinade was chew-able I'd probably just eat it, it smells so good!!!

[MaryB]

Dry cure for me, salt, lots of black pepper, some meat cure(pink salt). Give it 3-4 days in this kneading occasionally. It will form its own brine. Smoke for a couple hours then off to the dehydrator to finish drying out. This lets the natural meat flavors shine instead of being covered by a bunch of other flavors that concentrate as it dries out.

[smokeywolf]

Beef Jerky

3 lbs. lean beef sliced no more than 1/4" thick.

1 tsp. Liquid Smoke
1 tsp. Garlic Juice
1/2 cup Soy Sauce
1 tsp. Worstershire
1 tsp. A-1 Sauce

Marinate 6 to 10 hours
Sprinkle with lemon pepper and minced onion.

Dehydrate

[OnHoPr]

Jerky whether venison or some of the less palatable waterfowl species.

Morton's tender quick in a big bowl of water till an egg almost floats. Add fresh ground black pepper, crushed red pepper, garlic powder, brown sugar. Do this just before bedtime on a Friday or Saturday night and put in the fridge. In the morning after a cup of joe spear the ends with toothpicks and put on old fridge racks. Get a nice slow hardwood maple fire going in the ecksterior fire barrel for the old fridge smoker, so that it's going about 180 degrees and put the racks of jerky in the smoker. Keep track of temperature and check jerky about every hour after 5 hours for desired state. For me the real flavor is in the maple smoke. You can also do this with the whole flats of leg muscles and make a pretty decent venison pastrami.

Other uses: Take two or three pieces of jerky and chop finely. Put in a medium sauce pan with a cup of water. Let simmer (or less) an hour or so. Get Junior's Catfish biscuits ready and cooking. Add a couple of cups of milk to the steaming jerky water micksture. Thicken with cornstarch when the biscuits are just about done and enjoy smokehouse gravy and biscuits for breakfast. This smokehouse gravy is great on breaded pork chops for supper. Maybe even better than Cracker Barrel's. Oh Yea

[Blackwater]

Don't have any special recipes. Have always made them up on the spot when I've made it. But I do have a recommendation on a knife to use. If you can find one of the old K-5 or K-7 Cold Steel kitchen knives, pick it up. You'll be very happy. They have CS's proprietary serrations, and they cut thin slices of anything very well. I love mine for cutting onions really thin and fine for salads. Just pleases me that way, and it'll cut anything else you ask of it. Just be sure to use a slicing motion so the serrations can work efficiently. Wish I could contribute more. I like my jerky pretty thin, and thought this might help someone.

[JWFilips]

It's interesting what we call jerky today as the chewy snack meat. For years when I did 18th Century living I made jerked meat. Mostly venison…the meat was thinly sliced and dusted with evaporated salt ( salt spring water is boiled to form the salt crust on a pot then is scraped off & stored) Then the meat was hung on a wooden rack over a fire pit that was maintained with a slow ember fire for up to 12 to 24 hours... until the meat was totally dry. You actually cracked it off the wooden skewers. It would crumble in your hands if you crushed it. We would store it in glass jars to keep it from getting moist. No refrigeration needed. When you bit into it it crunched like a potato chip ( not chewy) You could carry it rolled & tied up in a waxed linen cloth for weeks on a woods trek. Crumble some up in water to make a broth or a stock for a quick camp soup or stew. It was also the type of dried meat that was mashed into the Indian Pemican ( trail food)
This form of 18th Century jerked meat is pure protein with no sugars or additives, not gooey or sticky but it is more of a staple then a snack food.
I'm not knocking good chewy jerky… just giving some historical insight into where it came from.

[gwpercle]

It's interesting what we call jerky today as the chewy snack meat. For years when I did 18th Century living I made jerked meat. Mostly venison…the meat was thinly sliced and dusted with evaporated salt ( salt spring water is boiled to form the salt crust on a pot then is scraped off & stored) Then the meat was hung on a wooden rack over a fire pit that was maintained with a slow ember fire for up to 12 to 24 hours... until the meat was totally dry. You actually cracked it off the wooden skewers. It would crumble in your hands if you crushed it. We would store it in glass jars to keep it from getting moist. No refrigeration needed. When you bit into it it crunched like a potato chip ( not chewy) You could carry it rolled & tied up in a waxed linen cloth for weeks on a woods trek. Crumble some up in water to make a broth or a stock for a quick camp soup or stew. It was also the type of dried meat that was mashed into the Indian Pemican ( trail food)
This form of 18th Century jerked meat is pure protein with no sugars or additives, not gooey or sticky but it is more of a staple then a snack food.
I'm not knocking good chewy jerky… just giving some historical insight into where it came from.

It can still be made that way with a dehydrator, and that's the way you want it if you are making jerky for the trail and no refrigeration needed.
My first attempt involved a salt water brine soak, a line strung in our hot summer attic with a small fan to move the hot air. We had way to much salt in the brine, the jerky was salt encrusted when dried...it didn't spoil but you had to wash the salt crust off before it was edible.
It wasn't good. But I'm reading and learning what does and doesn't work.

[JWFilips]

You Need very little salt to preserve dry meat! In the 18th Century salt was a Precious commodity ,,a little went a long way! ( & we were healthier for it!)

[dutch41]

½ teaspoon season salt, optional.
1 teaspoon of accent, cayenne powder, onion powder, garlic powder.
2 teaspoons black pepper.
1 tablespoon of tender quick/lb. of meat.
2 tablespoon of liquid smoke.
¼ cup of soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, teriyaki sauce.
½ cup brown sugar.
1 cup water.

This does 4-6 lbs. of ground meat. This also works fine with whole muscle jerky.

You may need to heat this on the stove top over a low heat to get the sugar dissolved, maybe not.

Scott