How to Dehydrate and Store Ground Meats

[Music] hello friends Heidi here from rain country god is good all the time and I've had several requests of shooting a video on how I dehydrated up ground beef and this is going to be super easy and I'm giving you a couple of different options so today actually what I have is dehydrated ground venison so I'm trying to make some room in my freezer by pulling out some of the stuff that's been in there for a while and this was from one of Patrick's hunting trips and we've got a lot of ground beef and venison and even elk in there so what I'm trying to do is take out some of the older meat get it dealt with one way or the other and make room in the freezer for some fresh meat so I plan on doing some bartering for some salmon or steelhead later on and so I need some more freezer space to put that in there and yes I also can meat and I do have a video I did on canned meat and how I use it that I will link down below so let me go ahead and talk you through this process I did take a few video clips that I'll be inserting here so simply all I did was after I thought out the ground venison I had about I would say a total of two pounds at least I just browned it on the wood stove as you can see in the pictures here and it browned it very well I wanted to make sure it was cooked all the way through and then after I did that I strained all the fat out of it or as much of the fat out as I could by simply putting my stainless steel strainer the mesh strainer over my big batter bowl or eight cup measuring cup and just kept pressing it with a spatula to get as much of that fat out of it as I could and then I went ahead and poured the fat into a little container and stuck it in my refrigerator to save for frying things and like potatoes and whatnot then what you want to do is get your tap water as hot as you can or whatever water you can even boil water and then pour it over there now before I did this what I did was I put a little dish soap in the sink and then round the water over as hot as I could so that way I've got dish soap in the hot water going there through there to help prevent any fat buildup in the sink but you could also do this outside if you would prefer then I took the mean let it strain out again trying to squeeze out you know push out as much of the water as I could and then laid it on my dehydrator racks like this I just simply spread it around and this right here that you can see is cloth I've had people asking me about this I actually did a video on how to make these so you could use parchment paper you could also use the fruit roll-up trays that typically come way like the nesco dehydrator like I have here but no matter what dehydrator you have typically your regular rack is not going to be the holes are going to be a little too big so I just recommend making some cloth covers if you've got a xcalibur you might want to make square ones and then of course like this one I did the doughnut shaped ones and then that way that prevents the little pieces from going through it plus if you have plastic racks like I do that helps prevent so much plastic exposure to your food and this will also help absorb any fat that you may not have fully gotten out of the meat in the first place and then what you want to do is wash these up in hot hot soapy water to get the fat out of the fabrics because it was meat I can set the temperature higher so I don't like to go up to 125 on my dehydrator on my dehydrator because even though it's meant to go that high it still will warp my trays and so that tells me it's too hot but a hundred and fifteen is a good heat and it only took about eight hours for it to fully dry if that now the way I did it last time was on the wood stove so if you've got a wood stove Patrick actually had made me a dehydrating rack I have several videos talking about that but I'll do I'll put the video down below where it shows how he made it out of old bed rails and then we bought this they're stainless steel racks I put those in there but what I did for this I actually put it on a stoneware cookie sheet on the top I tried to get pictures but they didn't turn out but what I'll do is on sort of pictured right here where it shows me drying out some soaked whole wheat grains because I'll soak them and then I'll dry them out on there on top so I actually set that cookie sheet on top of the rack on the wood stove and just stir it periodically and that's what I did with the ground beef when I did that so you can use either one of those methods you can also yes use your oven if you don't have a dehydrator or a wood stove you just simply crack the door open and set the heat on what about 175 to 200 degrees something like that I don't remember it's been a long time since I've had to use my oven to dehydrate anything and that that time it was jerky I suggest stoneware if you have it that's gonna dry the best if you're putting it in your oven and then just check it stir it every so often to keep it mixed around so it will dry more evenly and then when you're all done all you got to do is jarred up so what I'm gonna do I'm going to show you how I do this with the cloth is I simply when I've got little pieces like this I just roll the cloth like that especially because I've got that hole right in the middle you still probably lose some pieces this is very full and then I just dump it into whatever receptacle I'm gonna put it in and then you may have to turn it inside out and kind of scrape some of the pieces off like that that want a stick that's there they're loosely stuck on there I'm guessing I didn't weigh this out but I'm guessing it is about two pounds total at least it could be a little more than that but it's certainly not any less I want to be an even better idea is if you put a cookie sheet maybe a silicone cutting board that you could flex easily enough when you're pouring that in there and I didn't think to do that but that way you can kind of keep it all in one place and then just bend it and then pour it into whatever receptacle now I knew it'd be easier to dump it into here then to straight in there so now I'm just going to pour it in there and yes myself another jar because I wasn't sure if my calculations are right at how much meat I had it looks like you can put about a pound of ground meat into a pint sized jar you could actually put more in each of these those but you can fill them up a little fuller for this but you still don't want it clear to the top when your vacuum sealing okay so then all you need is a recycled canning lid yes you can use the Tattler lids but I find with stuff like this I've had some do really good for me and some not as good but then again I haven't tried it with a brake bleeder yet usually most of my problems I had worked with sealing had to do with the FoodSaver machine itself but the brake bleeder works so much better but either way a recycled lid you can use these metal lids over and over again when it comes to vacuum sealing just put your lid on there make sure everything is clean and drying and no particles in the way no chips or anything like that put your food saver top on there the appropriate size this is a widemouth because well I'm using a wide mouth jar and then you're gonna pump that up to about 400 or 15 depending on if you're looking on it at the outside number or the inside number or hip your gauges the calibration is off then go farther as is needed to make up the difference but also you can go by feel like I'm going quite a ways here because each time I do this is gonna feel a little bit different and I can tell by the feel if it's totally sealed see it's sealed and then I also recommend leaving it out for a couple days and checking it to make sure it's sealed especially since it's neat and then I also like to put the band on it though I clean my lids with soap and water and a wash rag I never use a scrubber on the lid top the reason why is because it makes the wording the from the permanent marker much harder to clean off with each use and to eventually where you can get it off at all so you have two ways that you can clean this off that won't scratch up the lid and one is to use just a dry erase marker color right over the top of it and then take a dry rag and then wipe it off it's the same idea as taking some isopropyl alcohol spray in just a little bit on there rub it in there good this one's a little more stubborn because it's an older lid and then take you can let it even sit for a few seconds that often will help if it's more stubborn and then just take a dry cloth and wipe it off and now you're ready to put what it is so I've got ground venison and the date so you know which wants to work through first so let me go ahead and sew this one up as well all right so I have ground venison 2020 and now it's ready to go in my food storage well I'll leave it out for a couple days so I can make sure it doesn't come on seal so far I've only used the ground beef that I did before in making spaghetti sauce and it turned out great and it just made the process that much easier I didn't have to worry about getting some kind of ground meat out of the freezer early in the day and let it thaw and then brown it it's just ready to go like all my other ingredients mix up my spaghetti sauce and yes I've made in Kandice spaghetti sauce before but I actually prefer to make my sauces up as I need them with the ingredients I can DUP or dehydrated up such as my dehydrated tomato flakes my hometown tomatoes and then now the ground beef and then whatever vegetables herbs and spices I'm going to add to that because I like to make it a little bit different every time depending on if I'm using it on pizza using it in homemade lasagna or spaghetti sauce or even raviolis and I do all of those from scratch I think it would also work really good in the tamale pie so I'll put my tamale pie recipe down below I have a video to that I also have a video to my basic Italian sauce that's before I started doing this but I don't think in that one I added the meat in it anyway because if I'm making a pizza sauce I don't put the meat in the sauce because that's gonna go on top somehow and then obviously it would be great cooked into soup so in all of these cases the meat the dried meat can go directly into whatever you're cooking it in because the wet ingredients such as in your spaghetti sauce the canned tomatoes the liquid in there is going to rehydrate the meat and cook it at the same time now if you're kneading it in something like maybe you're going to make tacos then you would need to rehydrate it now I don't know how long that would take I can't imagine it would take long and it would be simply just putting it in some hot water and then letting it soak for 10-15 minutes up to a half an hour however long it takes and then straining it out you would just have to try it and experiment with it to find out how long it's going to and it could vary depending on how hot your water is and what you're using I prefer to try to whenever I'm using dehydrated stuff I'd like to use it in stuff that already has some kind of liquid ingredient that I can cook right into it anyway and here's another suggestion for those times that I do actually rehydrate the vegetables or in this case it would be the meat what I like to do is instead of soaking it and just plain water I usually I like to add something to that to give more flavor to it as its rehydrated for example if I was going to use this to make tacos I would actually rehydrate it in my homemade salsa and then let it just soak in the flavor of the salsa in fact I would most likely just cook it right in there anyway because usually when I'm cooking up the ground beef to go in the tacos I usually add some salsa to that anyway and then my other spices like the cumin and the chili powder garlic onion and all that and so that's how I would do it I just put it in the pan add some salsa I'd probably put in extra to make sure there was plenty of liquid to rehydrate that meat and then just cook it until the meat is soft so very easy anything that you can use that you would use precooked ground beef in you can use this too and I actually am finding for that kind of thing I'm liking the dried ground beef better than the home canned ground beef which I have that too that is really good to eat right out of the jar the home canned ground beef but this is something that's going to take up a little bit less room and doesn't require any pressure canning so you don't even have to worry about that and how long it lasts on the shelf I can't tell you for certain I would think that as long as you got the meat fully dried and the jar stays sealed it should last for many years I've had jerky that I made sure was fully drying and the jars stayed sealed that are is still good and it's been in there for years but it is important that you keep checking those jars don't forget about and go back every so often and check on them to see make sure they're staying sealed okay well I hope this helped and gives you some ideas go ahead and put your ideas down below especially if you're already doing this what kind of things do you like to use your dehydrated ground meats in what sort of meals okay well I hope you learn something new thanks for watching take care and God bless you

Channel: Rain Country

Views: 30,467

Rating: 4.9656262 out of 5

Keywords: traditional, old-ways, Health, Garden, Frugal, Homesteading, Self-Sustainability, Cooking, DIY, Homemade, natural-living, herbs, dehydrating, food storage, meat, dehydrated ground venison, dehydrated ground beef

Id: WhwiQrP9S4w

Length: 14min 13sec (853 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 17 2020