Sweet Heat Habanero Honey Beef Jerky: Cured and Uncured

you want a meat treat packed with sweet heat well i've got you covered with this habanero honey beef jerky that everyone's gonna love so let's get started [Music] let's put together the marinade for this jerky and i'm gonna start with one and a half cups of worcestershire sauce and one half cup of soy sauce and those are gonna give us kind of a strong umami base that's gonna boost the meaty flavor of this jerky now for some pepper flavor but not a ton of heat i'm gonna add in a bottle of hot sauce now you use whatever hot sauce you like here and this is a five ounce bottle for my sweet i'm going with honey today and i want this to be kind of a sweeter jerky so i'm going to use one full bear of honey and that's a 12 ounce bear this time i'm going to be drying this in the dehydrator rather than cooking it in a smoker so for that smokey flavor i'm gonna add in a tablespoon of liquid smoke i've got one tablespoon of garlic powder one tablespoon of onion powder and for my heat i'm going with habanero peppers today now these are some pretty big girls so i'm gonna start with eight of them and see how that goes of course you go as easy or as hard as you like with the heat i really don't have a ceiling to my tolerance for spicy food but i do try and keep in mind other people that i may be sharing this with as i make it that being said i do want this one to sting a little i'm also going to add in some pink curing salt at the rate of one gram per pound of meat now this is a blend of salt and sodium nitrate that's used in processed meats to kill dangerous bacteria and also preserves color and affects the texture of the meat a lot of times down in the comments some of y'all like to give me the business about using the cure and for jerky it absolutely is optional but let me tell you if you're buying bacon or sausage or cold cuts or hot dogs or any kind of processed meat in the u.s this is in there even those that are labeled as uncured are using some pretty devious labeling practices to create the illusion that it's not in there but believe me it's in there because around here that's the law so now let's get all of this into the blender whizz that around for a bit and give it a taste i'm just going to take the stems off of these the seeds and those veins can stay in there because i want that heat [Music] [Music] be really careful with this guys you do not want to get any of this in your eyes probably not even on your skin [Music] now let's give that a little taste whoa oh yeah oh man that has got some serious heat but not all of that heat is going to transfer to the finished jerky so i want to start high oh man now you'll notice that i haven't added in the cure yet and that's because i need to weigh the meat to know how much cure to add so let's put this aside and slice up some meat i'm using beef today and this is top round steak also known as london broil and this is a nice cut for jerky because it's pretty lean the leaner the better with jerky because any fat that's left in the meat will go rancid sooner than the lean protein and shorten the shelf life of the jerky that's also why wild game which is nearly all extremely lean makes some of the very best jerky so i'm gonna trim away any of the fat from the outside and the large pieces that i can see on the inside away then we'll get this sliced up and into that marinade here's where i can decide whether i want to cut this with the grain or against the grain and that is going to affect the texture of the finished jerky if i cut that with the grain it's gonna give you kind of a chewier jerky you're gonna have to tear a bit apart with your teeth you're gonna gnaw on that a little bit longer and if you cut it against the grain it's gonna come apart a little easier on the bite so are you in for the long chew are you in for the economical chew well call me what you like but i am gonna cut this against the grain for a little more chewable jerky there you can really see that grain there running running across this way so i'm gonna cut across that i like my jerky kind of thick so i'm gonna cut these into around quarter inch slices this meat has been hanging out in the freezer for a little while so it's slightly slightly frozen and that makes it a little bit easier to slice now i need to weigh the meat to determine how much of the cure to put in like i said with jerky this is a hundred percent optional there are some sausages that i make that i would absolutely never try to make without using the cure but with jerky it's really up to you i like what it does for the color and the texture of the jerky but if you leave it out you're going to have really great jerky just the same as a matter of fact i'm gonna set some of this aside and i'll marinate this without using any cure and that way i can just show you the difference so before i add the cure to the marinade i'll put a little of this marinade in my uncured jerky here just want to put enough to get it really coated really well and i'll mix that together really good oh that spice coming off of there smells awesome [Music] that's five pounds of meat so i'm gonna use five pounds of cure and i always weigh the cure now i'll just spin that around real quick to get that cure dissolved now i'm going to get this marinade in the meat and mix it around really well and i want to do my very best not to get any of it on me so glove up seriously i'll fool around with jalapenos all day but these habaneros are another story and i don't want to get any of this stuff on me just make sure every strip of that gets nice and coated with that marinade don't worry about putting too much of this meridian in there get it all down in there now we'll cover that up and this will go out into the refrigerator marinade for at least a day but i really like two days to let that cure get in there and work its magic on the meat we'll take this little guy we'll put these both out there and then at least once i'll go in and i'll stir this all around one more time to make sure we get a nice even marinade boom now my meat strips are all nice and marinated and ready to start drying and the first step in getting these dried is going to be to pat off any of that excess marinade so i'm just going to lay these out one nice layer on some paper towels and then i'll pat the excess marinade off of them [Music] that'll do and now ready to move these right to the dehydrator racks rags i do like to use a dehydrator with my jerky of course you can use a smoker in fact up until a couple years ago i did all of my jerky in the smoker but since i've started using the dehydrator i really like the kind of dehydrated and dried texture that i get as opposed to the kind of cooked and smoked texture that you get out of the smoker i pulled some of that already padded dry jerky meat aside because i want to make a portion of this extra sweet and spicy i'm going to do that by adding in a little bit of this hot honey if you don't have hot honey just use some regular honey and a little cayenne pepper and you'll get about the same result i don't want to add a whole bunch of this or it's just going to make a big sticky mess so just a teaspoon or two per pound of meat and that'll just give it a little top coat to tickle the taste buds just mix that in really well just to get a very light sheen on all of that meat so let's take a look at the difference between this uncured jerky and the cured jerky before we even get these into the dehydrator and right away you're gonna notice the difference in the color that's because of the preservative quality of the cure that this jerky has stayed much redder than this jerky and you can't see it but if i feel these you can feel that this has broken down a little bit more and that's going to make this a little bit more tender get these down into the dehydrator and i've got that set at 150 degrees fahrenheit today and i'll set the timer for 12 hours these are pretty thick cuts of jerky the thinner ones are probably going to be finished around eight hours but a lot of them are going to take between 10 and 12 so i'll start peeking in there around eight pulling the ones that are ready to go and then just keep checking on them until they're all finished [Music] now let's see how we did and looking at these it's quite easy to tell which are the cured jerkies and which is the uncured these two on the outside have a much redder color than this dark brown one here in the middle and that one there is the uncured so now let's give these a taste and see how we did first up i got the cured habanero honey without the extra honey glaze [Music] oh yeah now that is some great jerky it's got big flavor but it doesn't cover up the flavor of the meat and that's something that's really important to me when i make jerky the sweetness is subtle but it's really good and it's got a really nice burn to it it's certainly not going to you but it'll definitely get your attention now the uncured the same flavor all right that is going to have a [Music] real similar flavor it's got i don't know if it makes sense but a little more of a cooked beef flavor and texture kind of like a pot roast as opposed to a steak it's a little different but it's really good too and now the extra hot honey glazed habanero sweet heat jerky [Music] that one is pure gold truly worthy of the sweet heat name it's got great honey flavor and a really good burn from the habaneros and that hot honey that one's gonna burn some people down but it hits me just right oh yeah and they're all cooked just right what i look for so when i break up in a piece of jerky i want to see those nice white fibers in there [Music] that lets me know that it's done just how i like it oh yeah so there are three jerky varieties out of one batch of marinade all of them are delicious so pick your favorite or make a ball and get your chew on thanks for watching [Music] oh yeah down

Channel: Age of Anderson

Views: 18,420

Keywords: sweet heat jerky, beef jerky, deer jerky, habanero honey jerky, habaneros, habanero pepper jerky, uncured jerky, cured jerky, jerky recipes, hot jerky recipe, spicy jerky, jerky, beef, venison jerky, deer recipes, venison recipes, dried beef, age of anderson, from what I gather, how to make jerky, dehydrator jerky, dehydrated jerky, dried jerky, food dehydrator jerky, cottage grove oregon, honey jerky, sweet hot jerky

Id: cYSEtBGuAOw

Length: 14min 39sec (879 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 12 2021