Smoked Beef Jerky, Sliced With or Against the Grain?

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey everyone how you doing today my name's Eric I really appreciate you stopping by and check out my video today on this episode of smoking I'm gonna show you how to make homemade smoked beef jerky now I got motivated to try this because a co-worker of mine Chad started making some jerky homemade with his dehydrator at home and he brings some into work to share with us and it was really good so I thought I'm gonna try this myself only problem is I don't have a dehydrator but hey I can use my smoker and that's what I'm going to be doing today first thing you need to do is to get a nice lean piece of meat I got a 5 pound I have the round roast here you could use a bottom roast you can use London broil whatever you use just make sure it's nice and lean because you don't want a lot of fat we're gonna be spicing it up with some basic ingredients I got some soy sauce some Worcestershire sauce a little bit of honey to give it a little bit of sweetness some garlic powder onion powder some ground black pepper and then as an option at least for me I'd rather be safe than sorry I'm going to be using some curing salt specifically prey powder number one this is just going to make sure all the harmful bacteria is going to be killed since we're not really going to be cooking this jerky we're just going to be drying it out so that is an option but for me you know what it costs very little and just to make sure that you're not going to get sick to me it's worthwhile to use it we're just going to use one teaspoon of this in for this five pound piece of meat but anyway I'm going to show you how to do this step by step stick around let's get cooking so the first thing you want to do is take the meat out of the package and you want to slice off any big visible pieces of fat fat is not good for jerky that's why you want a very lean piece of meat this particular I have the round roast that I had had a big piece of fat so I sliced that off now don't be concerned that there's little tiny pieces of fat that's okay and once we slice this into smaller pieces for the jerky you can always trim that off so the first thing we want to do after we trim all the fat off is we want to get this nice and cold so it's easier for us to slice very thin slices for the jerky the best way to do that is to just take a regular zip block freezer bag or you can use plastic wrap and we're going to stick it in there and we're going to stick it in the freezer for about 45 minutes to an hour what this is going to do now we don't want to get like completely rock-hard frozen like a brick we just want to get it nice and hard so with a sharp knife we can slice nice thin slices so I'm gonna go ahead and throw this in the freezer and we'll be back in a second and I'll show you how to mix up the marinade all right so let's get ready to mix this marinade now I'll leave all the specific measurements down in the video description the first thing we're going to use is one cup of soy sauce now I'm using the low-sodium soy sauce just because you know what I don't want it too salty but that's up to you one cup of Worcestershire sauce we're going to add one tablespoon of regular fresh ground black pepper 1 tablespoon of garlic powder one tablespoon of onion powder now I have two tablespoons of honey now if you don't have honey you can also substitute a quarter cup of brown sugar we just want to add a little sweetness to this with all this salty flavors we want to add a little bit of sweetness but not two months so two tablespoons of honey and then last but not least like I said it's completely optional but I'd rather be safe than sorry I have one teaspoon of the prank powder number one otherwise known as curing salt now if you weren't going to be smoking this you could certainly make this recipe if you have a dehydrator but if you're not going to be using a smoker like I am then I would add some liquid smoke probably a tablespoon maybe two tablespoons of liquid smoke just to give it a little bit of that smoky flavor so now all we're gonna do is just whisk this up until everything is diluted and kind of mixed in as best as possible I'm gonna go ahead and continue to mix this we'll throw it in the fridge for another 20 minutes or so to keep it nice and cool while we wait for that I have the round roast to get nice and cold so we can slice it so we'll be back in a little bit I'll show you the next step all right it's been around 45 minutes it's not completely frozen it's nice and hard so I probably could have left it in there for easily another half-hour 45 minutes but I just want to get this in the marinade and start going so I'm going to attempt it right now so what we're going to do now is we're going to slice it along against the grain as thin as possible now there's a couple options here if you slice it against the grain you're gonna get more of a soft jerky that's less chewy you can also slice it this way with the grain in the grain you can see is running this way which is going to give you a more chewy tough jerky I've seen people do it both but for me this time I'm going to go ahead and go against the grain because that's just what I've been taught so anyway we're just going to go as thin as possible just like this and bear in mind if it's not as thin as you think it should be as we go ahead and smoke this and dehydrate it it's definitely going to shrink the moisture is going to be coming out of this stuff so don't be too concerned if you get a piece that you think's a little too big so just like this we're going to slice it in the little thin pieces just like so now some of these bigger pieces you know if you want to cut them in half like this and get a couple smaller pieces of Turkey I'm probably going to do cut some in half and leave some hole to you know just to have a variation some thick pieces and some smaller pieces so there you go pretty easy I'm gonna go ahead and continue to slice this as thin as possible easier said than done and we'll be back when I'm done and I'll show you what we have left all right so here we are you know what I just had a thought come to me as I was slicing these since I have such a nice big five-pound piece why don't I try slicing it both ways and then I could do a little taste comparison at the end so these what I haven't sliced against the grain and then I think the rest of this I'm just going to slice with the grain and I'll make some nice little strips here these are nuts are gonna be much thicker of course but I think I might hang these from my grates in the smoker since they're a little bit thicker and I think that'll help them dry out a little bit better so that's what I'm gonna do and then hopefully we'll see at the end which way is the preferred method to slice against the grain which they say is going to give us a less chewy soft jerky or with the grain which is going to give us more of a chewie tough jerky I'm not sure which one I'm gonna like better but we're gonna try both methods here so let me get done slicing these we'll be back in a minute alright so here you here we are I put the pieces I'm going to hang on the bottom of the bag and then I put the other pieces on top so I'll be able to figure out how to separate them now we're going to let this marinate in a bag you can also use some kind of container if you'd like I just like the bag because you kind of move it around and just put it to some kind of container just in case there's any leaks we don't want to deal with leaking marinade all over a refrigerator so I've had this sitting in their fridge while we got this all ready to go I'm just gonna give it one final stir everything looks pretty well dissolved and then we're just gonna pour this marinade over the meat in the bag there perfect [Music] squeeze on that air out as best we can seal it up good and then before you put it in the fridge give it a good mixing move it around with your fingers make sure that marinade gets done all those pieces even the ones on the inside the ones on the top you definitely want to get that cure worked in - so right now it's around one o'clock in the afternoon I'm gonna be smoking this tomorrow now you don't have to soak it overnight like I'm going to be doing I'm actually going to be doing the more than overnight you know overnights typically eight to twelve hours I'm probably going to be doing closer 18 to 24 the only reason I'm picking the longer time duration is be the cure I want to allow the cure enough time to penetrate the meat and to cure the meat these slices are relatively thin so I don't need you know normally if I did something bigger you know like a ham or something it could take several weeks in a cure but these are very small pieces of beef so this should be fine now what I'm gonna do is every couple hours or every time I go to the fridge to get a drink or something I'm just gonna pull this out you get a little massage like this move it around shake it around maybe switch it a little bit and put it back in there so I'm gonna do that probably six or seven times tonight today and then tomorrow when I wake up I'll do it a few times before we try these pieces off and get him in the smoker so our job is done for today I'm gonna go enjoy the rest of my day I'll meet you guys tomorrow when we pull these out and get them on the smoking rack see you then welcome back everyone here we are the next day this has been marinating for 23 hours I was gonna let it go a full 24 but I got to pick up my son from school in a couple hours so ideally 24 hours is what I'd say with that cure but you know what 23 hours I think is going to be fine I have been massaging this like I showed you yesterday I did a couple times last night and a couple times this morning as well first things first put some kind of paper towel something down because this is going to get messy I got some butcher paper I just taped onto the countertop here the first thing we want to do is get this out of the marinade and dry it off as much as possible and then we're going to place it on the jerky racks I got two turkey racks and then this center rack here is where I'm going to take these skewers those thicker pieces I'm gonna thread them on here and I'm going to just let them hang down and the racks that I slide into mice okay so this is a little time consuming but like everything else it's a that's worthwhile in life requires a little bit of time so I just got a pan here with some paper towels and I'm just going to take the pieces of jerky and we're just gonna lay them out here our purpose here like I said it's just a dry mop as much as possible before we put them on the racks they're gonna smoke absorb that smoke flavoring much better if they're dry and of course that's also going to help us dehydrate this meat now we want to be dehydrating this meat at a relatively low temperature luckily the weather is very cooperative today I think it's a perfect day for smoking jerky because normally you want to cook this in a smoker anywhere from say 140 to 175 degrees you know you can even go up close to 200 but anything over 200 you really risk cooking it too fast and not only drying it out but turning it rock-hard and we want to do this nice and slow and so what you're gonna do here I know I'm looking ahead you watch the whole process but once you get some pieces laid down on a paper cut like that just take another paper towel and we're gonna just push it on the top like this and you can see all the moisture and that's all we're gonna do the second part here is you want to get some cooking spray I just got some Jeanette's cooking spray here and we want to spray it on these rats this is gonna make it much easier to remove the jerky because of this common for this to stick so we're gonna spray these racks and then we're just going to lay these pieces of Turkey on these racks now what we want to do when we lay them down on the racks is we want to make sure none of the pieces are touching because we want to have good airflow all the way around so it's kind of this is fun part it's a little time-consuming but I kind of look at it as doing a jigsaw puzzle in Reverse you're just kind of making all these pieces fit and trying to get as many pieces as you can so let me continue doing this we'll be back in a second when I got most of it done and I'll show you how it'll look like we'll be back in one second so I'm all done laying out the jerky I just wanted to give you guys a quick look I had plenty of room on these racks I didn't have to crown them too too much you know you obviously have fit a lot more but I'm spreading them out to allow enough air circulation to get around them so I got two turkey racks and then here I have a total of four skewers and as you can see here I just laced up thick pieces of jerky and I'm just gonna put this rack in my smoker and let them hang like this so there you go guys I'm gonna go outside fire up the smoker I'll meet you outside I'll show you how they look at the smoker we'll be right back one last thing I forgot to show you I got my smoker warming up right now is if you're looking for a little more heat you can sprinkle some crushed red pepper flakes on there if you just wanted a little more zippy some black peppercorns so that's exactly what I'm gonna do I'm gonna put a little bit of just a light dusting of some pepper this is not just black pepper this is a variety of peppers some white peppers in here too the pepper me metal D so I'll go ahead and put a light sprinkling of pepper on this just to give it a little bit different flavors and one of these racks I'm just gonna do a light sprinkling of red pepper just one because you know my son doesn't really like super hot stuff and as much as I do like it it's as I get older my body can't handle it as well as I could when I was a little bit younger so just a couple flakes like that perfect so I'll meet you guys outside we'll get them on the smoker I'll show you the next step be right back alright so here we are my smokers warmed up here I got the two top racks here with the turkey laid flat and then as you can see down here I have four skewers with jerky hanging make sure you put some pans underneath here to catch any dripping so you're gonna make a huge mess and the water pan I have in the very bottom don't put any water in it we want this to dehydrate so we don't want any water some people put sand if they have a hard time maintaining a low temperature we only want to be heating this up at a low temperature anywhere from 140 to 165 and it should take six to eight hours depending so I really don't know the other thing I need to tell you is be careful with how much smoke because these are very thin pieces of meat and we don't want to over smoke them so I'm gonna only smoke two trees of smoke one of apple and one of Hickory I put one in now initially get some smoke on it and I'm gonna let that burn for around an hour and I'm gonna put another little handful in one of the trays and then after that that's it I also put a temperature gauge here so I can maintain the temperature and see where we're at you want to open the vents on the bottom of your smoker you want to open your top vent as much as possible because the goal here is just to have air circulate and dry this meat out we don't really want to cook it so that's it now if for some reason you have a hard time maintaining that temperature don't be too concerned unless it starts creeping 200 and above every once in a while you might want to come and kind of open the door and just kind of air it out cool it down a little bit and later on when I'm done smoking I might actually remove these trays on the bottom here for the woodchips to allow more airflow in there so that's it I could start to see a very light smoke coming so I'm gonna go ahead and close the door and we will be back here I'll come back in an hour so and we'll see how everything looks we'll see you then all right it's been two and a half hours it's right at 158 which is basically right where we want it 158 165 that's all good now it stopped smoking I've been on here checking a few times before now the top pieces look like they're just about done let's let's take a look some of these little smaller pieces like say this piece here yeah well you see when you bend it it starts to get these white kind of spiderweb but it's pretty thick that one's gonna need a little bit more time but maybe a little thin piece like this might be yeah this one looks like it's done let's see yeah maybe a little bit longer it's tearing pretty good and you know what I'm just gonna give it a tad longer we're almost there some of these thicker pieces obviously are gonna require a longer time let me grab my oven mitt here now these bottom pieces on the bottom here then you see I can tilt it down a little bit so you guys could see this he's here they're dry but you could tell there's still a little bit of moisture in them so it's definitely gonna take longer for these pieces on the bottom but you know I'm gonna give these like another half hour and then I'm gonna come and some of these smaller pieces that look like they're done I'm gonna take off I just want to make sure they're completely dried out so give it another half-hour I'll start pulling the smaller pieces off and those other thicker pieces particularly ones hang in I'm gonna guess they're gonna take probably at least a couple more hours maybe three so we'll go from there all right while we're waiting for that jerky to finish up cooking time for a beer review I love the name of this in the picture it's New Belgium Brewing Company out of Fort Collins Colorado voodoo Ranger IPA I didn't know anything about this but I just the cover caught my attention the label there so I bought some so let's give it a shot I have to admit there's a little piece of jerky I was very thin it was dry I cut it in two pieces I gave a piece of my son I had a piece who it is good I'm looking forward to when some of those thicker pieces are done all right let's see here well for an IPA it's pouring pretty pretty light color it's a golden color let's get a smell okay I smell hops nice smell citrus definitely cops overwhelming hops with a little bit of maybe orange tangerine it smells good as always guys Cheers I appreciate your watching my video if you have any comments suggestions please leave comments below I try to answer or respond to every response that I get cheers thanks again okay a lot of fruit up front who we have orange tangerine and then a little dry finish with that hops in the background but it's not overpowering it's like a medium hops it's got a little bit of a slight bitter finish oh but it's good it's the fruit kind of gives it a little kind of mellows it out a little bit the fruit flavor it's very smooth boy I really like this so there you go guys voodoo Ranger IPA I would definitely recommend it so like I said I'm gonna go out and pull some of those thinner pieces probably in the next 25 30 minutes and get those cooling on a rack you want to let them cool for a good half hour just at room temperature before you try to package them up since I used to cure you can just put them in a in a ziplock bag and you know they can last in your refrigerator for probably I don't know three four five six weeks or if you vacuum pack them they probably last longer than that I know you can probably keep them outside at room temperature I just like keep it stuff in the fridge oh boy like it still taste the flavor it tastes very good I'm looking forward to this so I appreciate you watching my video I'm gonna enjoy this beer I'll come back maybe in an hour we'll check out some of those bigger pieces and then later on I'll have my son here we'll try some pieces and we'll see what he thinks on camera okay thanks again guys Cheers I really appreciate it we'll be back shortly all right we're approaching our number five I took the other pieces off both the other racks because they were sliced thinner as you remember they were cooked three and a half to four hours these took a little longer just because they are much thicker pieces as you remember as you can see here some of these pieces are done like this is definitely done I just want to make sure it's try it out like this piece here I still see a little bit of moisture here I think it's done because it's cured but you know what I'm just gonna take take this off the big pieces like this I'm just gonna lay flat on the rack here I'll give them another half hour 40 minutes just to really dry them out because there's definitely moisture in a couple of these pieces so I'll do that we'll be back shortly all right here we are they're all done look at how beautiful these big pieces on top man oh man they are nice I gotta show you I'm gonna slice it and want to show you because they're still very meaty and beefy and you can see they're pink inside I mean if you look at the color cue these top ones here are the ones I sliced with the grain as well as these over here you can see those so once I had hanging and then the ones down here in the bottom were against the grain you can see they're much thinner and kind of you know a little bit different so I'm going to do a taste comparison with my son and we'll get tell you what what we think if you're doing this in the dehydrator and you're not sure you're you know without the cure I recommend a cure because I'm not stressing on it I know this is done but without the cure you want to make sure that jerky reaches an internal temperature of 165 if you don't have a temperature thing you can also put the jerky take it off when you think it's done and then put it in a pan and put it in the oven at 275 preheated for 10 minutes and that should kill any germs pathogens in the jerky look at some of these pieces man oh we've still got a little bit of juice on them they're very juicy even though they're completely dried out let me slice into one and I'll show you in a second all right so here we are I just want to show you this this is a particular thick piece you can see it's pretty thick I try to bend it here you can see it's starting to crack let's totally dry it out but what I want to show you is when I slice this here this is probably a smallest piece of meat I sliced for a rough I'm a YouTube but look at that that's all completely cured you see why it's pink that's why it's cured that's why all these pieces have a little bit of a pink tone to them or take to them that's because it meets fear fully cured so it adds a different flavor and it also guarantees then it's fully cooked look at this oh man let's try a piece right now Wow the flavor of the marinade mmm very good I'm glad I didn't add any extra salt there's there's plenty of salt with the worst dish here and the soy sauce mmm so this is the okay cut with the grain and it is definitely more chewy but it's also very tender very delicious you know what let me get my son out here and we're gonna do a side-by-side comparison tell you what we think all right guys I just wanted to show you a side-by-side comparison I cut these pieces up when I bring my son out so the slice against the grain there's supposed to be left less chewy and more soft is this one and that's the thin pieces you see it is rather soft this would be less chewy more like your traditional dirky this over here with slice with the grade more chewy and look at it man oh man so so so full of juice so I just wanted to show you that the two differences and we'll try them and we'll tell you what what we think will be right back all right everyone here's my son Kyle we're all alone tonight mom and little sister are out of town so this is kind of a special treat I just want to let you guys know when you're done taking it out of the dehydrator or smoker or whatever it is lay them out let them sit out for a couple hours and they'll continue to cool down and dry out before you either put them in a ziplock bag or you can you know do a FoodSaver vacuum sealed bag which is gonna last longer if you use a cure they're gonna last a couple months no problem so whatever method you do so here we go Kyle so this is the more traditional it's less chewy and soft sliced against a gram so take a piece here so this is supposed to be more soft and less chewy how's the flavor hmm I think it's great it's not too salty not too spicy yeah mmm so was that too chewy or no okay so now I want you to try this piece this is a sliced with the grain more chewy and tough okay it's definitely more chewy but it's softer it almost tastes like for a second you think you're eating a steak I don't know which one you prefer I'm very honest in my opinion I prefer this one you do with the brain yeah it is in a weird way it's just it's so beefy and these sticks here that I made I mean look at these things Wow you could just carry this just eat this I mean these definitely have more weight tool these are okay to these pieces you know I got a couple real good ones you know the flat ones like that but these big sticks sliced with the grain Wow your dog even want so the way you think pal Tom what do you think do you prefer with the grain I think I might have to agree which I'm shot I remember when I went to class today I mean I told a few people about this and they were so jealous of it but the trap piece again you can't surprise so guys as always hmm I appreciate your watching if you liked the video hit like if you like my channel subscribe hit the link in the top corner there it's for my website Eric smoking barbecue calm I always appreciate you guys support we'll see you next time okay bye mmm good journey we'll see you around next time bye

Channel: Smo'King BBQ Tips & Recipes

Views: 94,432

Keywords: Beef Jerky, Sliced with the grain, Sliced agains the grain, Smoked Jerky, smoked beef jerky, smoking jerky, beef jerky recipe, pit barrel cooker, how to, sous vide, slow cooker chili

Id: hl5ukRGpA_A

Length: 32min 7sec (1927 seconds)

Published: Thu May 03 2018