After letting the meat marinate all night it was time to start the process of dehydrating jerky. So this morning I grabbed my dehydrator and all twelve trays.
I grabbed the marinated meat out of the refrigerator. It had been in there for around 16 hours
and started filling my trays. Some people really pack it in tight, I like to allow some spacing for airflow. The meat will shrink over time as it’s dehydrating but the tighter its packed the longer it will take.
I decided to add a little more heat to four of the trays so I grabbed some red pepper flakes
and sprinkled some on the jerky.
The 24 pounds of meat filled all twelve of my trays. That is going to be a lot of jerky!
So I threw the lid on it and set it for 160. Now it’s time to wait. When I am about 6 hours in, I will re-stack the trays and put the bottom on the top and the top on the bottom to get even dehydrating.
*update*
well I let the jerky go for 6 hours yesterday and then flipped the trays around and let them go for another 12. I then pulled about half of the jerky off that was the closest to being finished and stuck that in the fridge.
this condensed the jerky down to 6 trays,
so I let those go for 12 hours last night and checked it this morning and these were getting close to being done
So I grabbed the stuff from the fridge and recombined them all onto 7 trays to finish them all of at about the same time in 6 hours
You can see the full recipe here
That is some good looking Jerky.
I also prefer Jerky to have fat content although most do not. It increases the drying time considerably and also reduces the shelf life.
Most folks go with a 1/4 in thick cut, your cuts look really thick.
How much finished product did you get from the 24 pounds? Also what is the model number of the machine?
What type of meat did you use and what did you marinate it in? I am very new to dehydrating and I am terrified to try jerky although I love it.
We used top butt, there should be a link for a marinate, don’t be scared it’s easy, just stick it in the fridge or freeze it
I’m sorry, but I’m not going to say what that first pic looks like. I keep seeing it on the “suggested” threads on the forum page, and the first time, it was a little startling.