Does anyone here make their own jerky?
I learned how to make it on a trip to America and got the idea to start making it and sell it in the UK. The only issue I could see is the meat I was told to use is so expensive I'd struggle to break even. I was told to use eye of round, is there a cheaper cut that will result in the same quality jerky?
Over here a 50g bag costs about £2.30 in stores, how close could I get to that price with homemade?
>>948076
You can really use just about any cut of meat you want. With fatter cuts, you'll have to trim more fat off, though. Top round and bottom round work well. Experiment with whatever you can find. Even if it isn't optimal, it should still be edible.
I don't know about the UK, but in the US random cuts of meat go on sale pretty often.
I just hope the quality of UK beef is better than the quality of UK sausages~
>>948076
>Over here a 50g bag costs about £2.30 in stores, how close could I get to that price with homemade?
I can't do the math right now, but buy some meat, weigh it, and then weigh the resulting jerky. Frankly, in my experience, homemade jerky isn't much cheaper than buying store bought jerky.
>>948076
You can't just make jerky and sell it. In order to sell foodstuffs in the UK there are significant regulatory hurdles negotiate. You can't easily just do it in your home kitchen. Do you have substantial financial backing for this venture?
>>948084
I live on a military base and will be selling it to a very small amount of people. I'm not bothered by the red tape.
>>948076
You can use any cut you want, the marinade and spices overwhelm the flavor of the meat by miles. Just make sure it's LEAN. As in NO FUCKING FAT, either because it's a quality cut or because you trim it all with a knife. Fat doesn't dry properly and will make your jerky go rancid.
>>948079
that is not the point of sausages. As a hint, Victorians referred to them as 'bags o'mystery'
>>948076
Round here its about $1.50 an ounce. I make my own regularly, even got a family recipe. Now the thing I gotta stop you at is expensive meat. I reckon more than the average Joe ain't no jerky connoisseur, ain't no point in using the top dollar meat. Hell once the meats dehydrated rump roast won't taste no different than sirloin in the same fashion.
Now you should also experiment with different meats and see which you like and can make the best with whatever recipe of marinade you prefer.
For example
>venison
I make a lot of deer jerky and it's kinda my specialty, and mesquite or a really salty barbeque tastes the best with it. As with all meat you should make sure when you're prepping you have as little fat as possible, as fat holds water and it will make your dehydration process a bitch I'll tell you hwat. Now deer's got a lot of sinew and it can be a hassle
>beef
Beef is really good for spicy marinades don't know why, guess it's something about the biology of it, cause venison in my opinion don't taste so good spicy. But beef can also be really tricky to prep, most cuts of beef have really prominent grains, you should always cut along the grain to maintain tenderness even when you dehydrate it to a crisp. Also depending on which cut you get it could have A LOT of fat, like brisket.
>pork
Don't have much experience with this to be honest
>dove
Once you get all the meat down to the final point after cleaning it'll probably be only a few nuggets, so quantity over quality pretty much, also tastes really good with lemon, depends on personal tastes though
>Duck
Naturally really tender and prepping isn't much effort, tastes really good in a teriyaki marinade
>turkey
Don't even try it.
Make bacon instead.
>>948076
use flank steak
Meat, salt, and either a little heat/smoke or a fan. Put it right in front of the fan or above smoking cinders. The end.
>>948212
pork jerky tastes the best desu especially with some sort of sweet flavor like teriyaki
use a lean cut like tenderloin or alternatively get some slab bacon and use that
>>948302
Tenderloin would be the only cut I would use but wouldn't it be too fatty?
>>948076
If your going to make jerky in bulk. Goto a local butcher and ask him if you buy im bulk at one time if you would get a discount. Easiest is to buy a whole or half cow and get it cut up however you want.
My lesson to be had:
I use this recipe: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/58946/dads-jerky-marinade/
I marinate for 24 hours, stir/flip, marinate another 24.
I usually chop up a not so fatty roast when it is on discount, but cheap steak seems to have worked better in the past.
Pork does taste different, but I cannot tell why. It is chewier, but not as flavourful I think.
The direction in which you cut the meat matters. It'll either be stringy or powder, depending on whether you go with or against the grain. They both have their pros and cons.
Dehydrate for maybe 6 hours if you cut thin, more the thicker it is. I have never dehydrated for more than 8.
That recipe at the top is for 1 pound of meat. Start eyeballing it after awhile and throwing in more hotsauce and montreal steak spice and paprika.
I think I fit up to 3 pounds of meat into my 40$ dehydrator (pic related)
>>948510
PS, I did the math, that recipe produces jerky at almost exactly 50% of the average supermarket price here in Canada, based on the ingridents I purchase.
>>948076
ok so as far as selling it goes, /biz/.
how are you going to test for contamination? one fuckup out of a thousand orders is going to screw you into bankruptcy.
the dry weight of meat is about 1/5th of that of its wet weight. although depending on how good your butcher is, (doesnt swell it with water) yes, australia has no laws regarding adulterating food its fucking stupid. its legal to mix permeate with milk here to increase volume even. now for wet jerky you're looking at 1/2 the weight. so first of all you need to deduct from your price here the cost of 100g of meat. so you can buy 200g of the cheapest beef rump at safeway for 3 pounds. that gives you a starting cost of materials of 1.5 pounds per pack. now your profit is 70p off that. now you also need nitrates and spices so lets say an extra 10p per piece. so we're down to 60p.
assuming you can sell 1kg a day, you're looking at making 6 pounds per day. but you need to undersell the competition because you're not a legally registered food preserver. you can kill people with your dodgy meat. so you need to undercut the competition. by a fair margin. so you might only end up making 3 pounds per day. seems like a pretty shitty yield not to mention the awful smell it will attract pests doing this every day. wasps love drying meat.
>>948510
biltong is cut with the grain. jerky is cut against the grain. dont fuck this up. different preservation methods for different foods. do not fuck with food preservation you will die.
jerky is not just dried meat.
![maxresdefault[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/rTUYq6D.jpg "maxresdefault[1].jpg")
>>948076
Jerky is what you make out of shit meat. Tough, nasty butcher cuts. Like others have said, low-fat is the most important thing. (And it isn't that critical. A more fatty cut will still dry up into a nice chewy beefy snack, they just don't "keep" for nearly as long.)
Literally anything made of meat works. Beef, pork, chicken, turkey, hams, bacons, fish, deer... it's just whatever you can get ahold of and what marinade works best with the flavor of the meat.
I use the Alton Brown method, which is nothing more than a few box fans and some clean plastic screens. He used furnace filters, but fuck that... that's filthy.
Better than any chicky scented candle... you can make the whole house smell like liquid smoke and beef.
>>948076
take this to /ck/
>>948084
Mate, single mom slags on facebook think you can sell 6 cupcakes for £20 because 'they made them at home'.
I'd happily buy jerky over the shit next to the wine shelves in Asda.
Jerry is only cost effective if you hunt and use the resulting meat
![845927p[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/uPERN3m.jpg "845927p[1].jpg")
>>948076
My wife bought one of these. Makes great jerky.
I have the butcher at my super market cut the meat for me. His slicer is way more accurate and consistent than me hacking away with a knife. It's a free service so why not?
Coming up with the right marinade is the hardest part but at least you get to eat the rejects.
Soy sauce
Molasses
Sugar
Salt
Liquid smoke
Black pepper
Red pepper to heat level desired
Taste solution sound be salty but balanced with some sweet. Cut meat. Marinade for 5min. Dehydrate 135F. Enjoy.
Favorite cut...brisket. It's more chewy but the best flavor.
OP you could try peddling pemmican. It's basically the ultimate protein survival food, 50 pound bags made hundreds of years ago were said to last decades if made and stored right.
It's a lot like making jerky except you can use meat from any part of the animal. The only thing is you have to use rendered tallow from a grass fed animal.
I've made beef, bison, pork, venison, lamb, turkey, african lion, and antelope. Ask me anything.
>>949357
Proceed to look up pemmican and tallow. I end up reading about the pemmican wars between two fur trading companies.
Well played
>>949809
Can you see the stars from the middle of a black hole?
>>948550
but your not adding in the "homemade,artisinal,etc" angle, here in usa that almost always doubles the price of the end product
>>948076
/diy/ - Food, cooking and financial advice
>>949841
Yes because of gravitational effect on the light coming from them.
>>948076
Check out these guys.
To my knowledge they are the most well known competition, you would probably want to aim at similar price point.
It's more expensive than the jerky typical jerky from the supermarket, but that stuff is vile.
>>950201
Forgot the link. Duh.
http://cowleysfinefood.com/
>>948212
This guy gets it.
Families that hunt for deer, pig, end up with pounds of meat. Jerky is a great way to use up a lot of it at once. I've made jerky from venison and wild boar; both are good. Lots of guides online.
For beef... basically what others have said, any low-fat cut will work and I'd just look for end of week butchers specials and keep it cheap. I'd also buy a dehydrator for making it... much easier than oven, better results.
Shot a boar 2 weeks ago. Going to grind all the meat up for sausage.
Hey OP, dehydrator owner here. I use top round or bottom round. Not sure how much meat goes for in the UK but around here if you go to a noncorporate grocer (anything ethnic or like a general polish/eastern euro deli) you can get three or four big slices of the shit for 4-5 bucks. Also, bacon jerky. Cook before dehydrating the bacon tho
>>950343
I've done a few good runs of jerky, and I only have an oven. I just put the temp as low as it can do and prop the door open, and the shit I make seems to turn out fine.
Prefer biltong to jerky but that's just personal.
Speak to local abbatoir and hunters and buy whole animals - the price drops amazingly for a whole animal.
I work with a lot of south africans and they tend to make their own. The usual homemade drier is a simple box with fly screen on 2 sides and a fan on one of the fly screens drawing air across the meat.
>>948076
I personally vacuum marinate the jerky before i dry it. It is a lot quicker then marinating it the regular way and the jerky will have a better (softer) feeling since it softens the meat.
The problem is that you either need to make one yourself or need to buy a professional one since the small plastic ones do not work as good.
>>948076
I buy my meat in bulk and freeze it , used to go to a butchers where I knew a guy , one day saw the van that delivered meat there , took down the number , called them , put in an order and they delivered it. Literally loads of the wholesalers will sell to the general public as long as the order isn't tiny
>>949039
good idea
ground beef works fine formed into strips...can be bought very lean and decently cheap
i do my own just because they don't sell it here.
>>948081
I use corned beef or topside at usually around $10-15 a Kg. I usually get a Kg out of 2.5 to 3 kg of raw meat. So at worst $45 a kg for the finished jerky but usually about $30 a kg lately . Jerky in the shop is $70-100 per Kg.
Depends on how much you spend on meat but ratio is around 2.5:1or 3:1
>>948528
You'll always "win" in price when comparing the price of buying the ingredients vs. buying the final product because you are skipping the processing and logistic costs.
>>948528
You make 50% quantity, or you pay 50% cost?
>>948076
Paying 4 Euro for a 50g bag. Time to monitor the thread.
>>948076
>50g
Walmart has 3oz for $4.00 US
>>948110
This. Look for a sale, buy in bulk at Costco, METRO, $whateveristhatwholeseretailerinUK
Also, you don't need to necessarily match the price of the cheap stuff - charge a little more for high quality.
>>954258
Uhhh...both?
When all is said and done, I make twice as much jerky as I would buy for the same price of the ingredients.
Not technically jerky, but much better is South African biltong.
Use beef fillet, rub with salt, vinegar and lightly dry roasted coriander seeds. Make sure you use enough salt. Hang up the meat on metal hooks in an enclosure that lets wind through, in the dry season. If your dry season is warm, make sure the biltong is well shaded, if your winter is cold and dry keeping it cool is less of an issue but shade is still required. Leave for a few weeks (removing it while still "wet" results in a softer, deep red centre. Drier biltong is harder and blackish all the way through. The UK is very wet, so you'd probably want to dehumidify. Making biltong works best in arid semi desert or dry savannah during winter
Dendeng is the best jerky.
>>948076
Just a reminder that if you use sugar, molasses, or anything sweet in your jerky you are ruining the meat and making a strip of candied shoe leather no better that the garbage that is Jack Link.
>>957952
Hi there garuda fellow
>>948076
Don't compete on price
