Let's make FISH JERKY! (yum)

okay I'm back at home this is a day after I caught all those delicious-looking pan fish here's my this is my filleting station but I wanted to to spare you that that savagery so I so I decided to you know do that off-camera and by the way my filleting skills are actually getting better as far as boneless filleting so what I did actually the rock bass and I think it was the big bluegill and the redbreast sunfish those still are like bone-in like almost whole fish fillets - the head that I think I'm gonna do some kind of tasting thing with later but that leaves us with all the pumpkin seed which I did more or less boneless fillets there might be a bone or two and I wanted to do something different this time so I don't know if you know what this thing is but that is a dehydrator and my plan for these boneless bluegill fillets is to make some fish jerky some bluegill jerky so I'm gonna put just put the chesty on and get this process started and oh and you might be wondering why we're gonna do this outside two reasons first reason is my kitchen is kind of an embarrassing mess right now and I don't want you to see that second of all I don't want my entire house smelling like fish because the second this machine gets going that's what's gonna happen but I mean we do have some some critters around here like raccoons skunks possums that will probably also have an interest in outdoor dehydrated fish so at some point I'm probably gonna have to take it inside but during the daytime I think we'll be alright so anyway let's get this process started alright so here's the plan here is my big bag of boneless pumpkin seed fillets it's actually quite a bit of meat I'd say that's maybe a pound and a half two pounds now probably more like a pound and a half I feel like I'm talking about a you know a full fish I always have to mention the weight for some reason anyway so what we're gonna do first of all I'm just going pour out a little of this excess liquid that has accumulated in here right there why not attract more critters now you guys might know as far as marinating fish some people say to get some milk involved to take away some of that fishiness but first of all I don't mind the fishiness second of all I'm not sure how the milk would affect it when you're gonna dehydrate it so forget about the milk I have this stuff this is one of my favorite hot sauces from volcanic peppers it's a spicy ponzu sauce their first iteration was a lot spicier it does use ghost peppers but it's not like crazy crazy hot but I think that this will be a great flavor for jerky and there's not much left so but I think it's enough to to you know impart some flavor so we're gonna put this in here all of it just when you use it all up get in there I mean it smells like jerky the sauce that is like teriyaki or well ponzu I guess alright that's about as good as we're gonna get then hey you always got the soy sauce packets lying around from delivery you can never seem to use them up so we're gonna put some extra soy sauce in here I figured two packets is okay because the ponzu also has soy sauce in it and you know salty jerky is always good this will be plenty salty okay so two packets of soy and then since it's salty enough now we have this organic no salt seasoning a blend of 21 organic spices and ingredients from around the world to go go into this sensational no salt seasoning it's definitely got garlic in it I've had it on numerous things but anyway just kind of get some of this in there that's probably good I don't want to I don't want to overdo it now we're gonna seal our bag up again make sure flavor makes its way around so I'll keep kind of massaging this flavor into these fillets and of course we're actually not going to start dehydrating yet because I want it to really kind of have time to marinate so I'm gonna give it you know a few more hours in the fridge and the next step would be kind of blotting all the extra moisture off of these guys and getting them on the dehydrator after that it's really just a waiting game I think they say 12 hours or so so cool will be when these when these guys are rocking and ready to go ok so it's been about four or five hours the fish is marinated and should be ready to go a slight location change here we're now on my back deck I figured if we're gonna do this outside and there's a chance of raccoons or whoever coming and stealing my meat it's a lot less likely up here although there's trees so I'm sure they could still figure it out but anyway I'm starting to think this might not actually smell so bad in my house so if I need to bring it in tonight I can but that's neither here nor there let me show you what we're gonna do alright so there's our fish very appetizing looking I know I I bought it out all the excess moisture that's from a Japanese maple tree that's also neither here nor there there's my kid he's here okay so this is the dehydrator as you can see I took a couple of the racks out of it you don't need to use all the racks at once and we don't need it with this amount of meat anyway if for no other reason that that would be more cleaning that we don't want to do but you do need at least three so that this thing can can operate freely so anyway we're probably only used one or two racks here but of course you gotta take this top off it's all pretty self-explanatory you just kind of lay your meat out you lay your meat out on the on the racks what I saw online about dehydrating dehydrating fish is that you want your fish to be no more than like 1/4 inch thick but with these you know small pan fish I really don't think we have to worry about that so let's do it let's uh let's assume we're gonna use two racks here so if there's some bigger pieces some smaller pieces some full fillets I'm not so full fillets maybe we'll do the bigger pieces on top and the smaller pieces underneath them I don't think it really matters because it's supposed to you know distribute the dehydration evenly okay put that to the side now we're a little over our little bite wounds that's what we call them Oh another big guy it's okay from here it's okay I did keep the skin on we'll see what happens with that and the dehydration process smells it actually smells really good okay we're gonna put the top rack back read the laws and we need that third rack so that the the dehydrating part can operate freely so now we put this on top and we turn it turn it on and twelve hours later at least 12 hours later we should have some good safe dehydrated fish because the last thing I want right now is a parasite in my belly but I did look it up as long as we got salt involved as long as you know it dehydrates at a certain temperature which I believe will be the temperature that this thing defaults to you shouldn't have to worry about anything like that so I guess that's it for now and the next time you see me we're gonna see the finished product and we're gonna taste it okay good luck Brendon okay it's 4:30 in the morning I'm down on my couch because I don't want to wake up my wife with my loud voice but we're gonna go up and take our first look at our fully dehydrated pumpkin seed jerky um I did take it off the deck before I went to bed last night just because I didn't want to be thinking about animals getting to it or or whether but anyway so I'm gonna go up I'm not gonna say anything I'm just gonna give you a look and then I'm gonna put it all into a plastic bag and put it in my fridge I am gonna store it in the fridge even though it's dehydrated so yeah alright let's let's go take a look okay I just wanted to pause really quickly to give you guys a close-up shot I didn't do that in what you're watching right now but this is what the jerky looks like you can tell this is a filet right here that's the skin side that's the meaty side get some good light on there okay so you can you can tell it's fish but it also you know kind of resembles any other kind of meat jerky like beef or turkey or whatever again you know this is the meaty bits it's it's definitely very dry very hard up and there's a little scale in there but we can take care of that anyway but it's tasty it's really tasty and once you start chewing it up it gets you know plenty moist and you know retains that that flavor so very cool very cool and I've got quite a bit of it so this would be a good snack for a while back to back to me again okay it's about eight hours later from the last time I saw you here's our bag of jerky of pumpkin seed jerky that's been in the fridge if you've probably noticed this morning when I when I opened up the dehydrator it was very dry like very dehydrated and kind of almost like cracking so you know it's a it's definitely gonna be a little tough I took this one piece and I put it in the microwave for about 15 seconds just to kind of soften it up a little bit but you know it's um I'm not gonna beat myself up about it for a few reasons first of all it is there is jerky that's like this tough usually you know see it in like a like a like a general store or something like in a jar by the counter and also you know it's my first time trying to do this and you know just the fear of you know parasites or bacteria or whatever so I'd rather err on the side of caution and make you know very dehydrated very well cooked or you know treated fish jerky then you know then not but I will look into ways that I can even reconstitute this stuff a little bit get a little moisture in there but and also for the next time you know so that it's not quite so dry it's a little so that it's a little chewier but without further ado this is gonna be the first time I taste it I did not taste it last night or early this morning at all so this is gonna the first taste I mean it's pretty dry but you know work your saliva into it a little bit and it's just fine um it's a little fishy but I don't mind it that way at all I'd like to be reminded that this is fish I can feel like and I can sense the spiciness from the hot sauce kind of that that uh kind of teriyaki or in this case ponzu flavor really comes through it's salty it's spicy it's uh it's aromatic and and there's some sweetness I think just from the fish itself if you notice I did include the skin even on parts where there's not any meat behind it I figured that would impart some more flavor maybe some more nutrients to let me take another bite here it's a little crunchy but again once it kind of mixes with your saliva it becomes chewy I'm very tasty in this second bite I'm not even really tasting the fish too much it more just tastes like some some regular like spicy beef jerky this is very good I'm very pleased hopefully uh hopefully it's safe but I think it is I think it is especially with that 12 hours in the in the dehydrator this is really good I'm really happy with this all right so I'll look into ways of you know making it a little bit moister but for a first first effort I'm really happy with it and I would definitely definitely do this again um I think I mentioned earlier it's kind of good that that we were using sunfish here pumpkin seed because it doesn't have a lot of fat content when when the fish has a lot of fat content there that's where you might run into problems getting it like fully dehydrated and you know getting any nasty things out of it but I think we're safe I think we're good and this is really delicious I wish you could try it but anyway I hope you liked this one I'll definitely be making more fish jerky in the future and right now is where I ask you to please like please smash that subscribe button and as always guys fish like there's no tomorrow peace just drop my jerky

Channel: The Big Red Angler

Views: 1,424

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Id: r9ruFdACH8k

Length: 16min 29sec (989 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 05 2020