Honey Teryaki Chipotle Jerky | Page 4 | Food Production and Preservation | Forums

you really have very little to worry about with the jerky, your bigger concern is making sure it is lean because the fat can cause it to go rancid, think of it like this, here are the cooking temps for steak

how many people eat rare steak? I do

bacteria really need 3 things to grow, time in a warm moist environment, the dehydrator takes the moisture out of the equation which slows down the bacteria growth, notice I didn't say stop. Bacteria is everywhere, there's bacteria on the food you buy at a restaurant or store, it's the amount of bacteria that makes someone ill.

And bacteria explodes if it has a long time in a warm moist location.

You can always freeze it if it really concerns you, I usually do with any meat that is a little fatty to keep the fat from turning and just unfreeze what I need.

As far as chemically cooking, that would be mostly seafood, like a ceviche that uses fresh seafood combined with lemon and lime juice that "cooks" the seafood, it technically doesn't cook it but does make it safer to consume raw, you can read more about it here

http://en.wikipedia......ki/Ceviche

with that being said though, the usda does recommend bringing meat up to 160 first and then finishing the dehydrating from that temp, you can read more about it here

http://www.fsis.usda.....y/ct_index

here is the manual from a nesco dehydrator like the one I have, their temps are less than what is recommended by the usda, how many food illness outbreaks have you heard from home made jerky? In todays litigious world, I guarantee if there was a large number of people getting sick from home made jerky there would be a class action law suit. Yet how many food borne illness outbreaks are there from our "safe" govt controlled food supply

http://www.nesco.com.....drator.pdf

use good quality meat, in a timely fashion and you should be fine

yeah, it's more of a biltong than a true jerky, I like the extra chewiness

what marinate do you use?

you gonna do the traditional method?