Making Beef or Venison Jerky in a Portable Smoker

Making jerky in a portable grill/smoker is the best jerky that I have cooked. It has a real smoke flavour because you use real wood chips. With a good marinade you can make delicious jerky.

I have tried the oven, a food dehydrator and a portable smoker, and I prefer the smoker. The smoker gives it a much deeper flavor than the other two methods of cooking jerky. While you are limited to the quantity of jerky you can make at a time, it is worth it for the flavor. I also believe that it is cheaper than the other two methods of making jerky. It costs me a around $.75 cents to cook (with charcoal and wood chips) almost two pounds of jerky.

Now the types of meat that I like to use. I have seen a recipe that called for brisket meat. The best jerky should have very little or no fat in it! Brisket has too much marbling for jerky, but brisket it is great for corned beef. I personally prefer meat from the eye of the round. It has no or little fat in the meat. I will also use the inside round, outside round or sirloin tip. These cuts of beef also have less of a chance of containing the e coli bacteria which seems to predominate the exterior of animal.

You will want to cut your roast as thinly as you possibly can. If you have a slicer handy use it. The best way to cut your meat is to put it into a freezer to firm it up. You do not want to completely freeze it, you just want to make it firm for cutting into thin strips.

You will now want to marinate your meat. There are some good recipes on the internet. Or you can even buy some good spice packages to use on your meat. The recipe I use is as follows, for one pound of meat;

4 or 5 oz of teriyaki.

1 tsp of chili powder

2 tsp of kosher salt

1 tsp of pepper

1 tsp crushed peppers

I do not worry about preserving it because it everybody eats it within two days.

Let it marinade for 24 to 48 hours. I have tried 6, 12 and even 18 hours, but the longer it marinades the better it tastes. Place the meat in the marinade and every few hours turn the meat over and stick it back in the fridge.

Now it is ready for the smoker. Put some wood chip and charcoal into the smoker. Make sure that there is no bark on the wood, because in gives the meat a funny bitter taste. Do not use too much charcoal or wood chips, because I have prematurely cooked the meat or even burnt the meat when I started using the smoker for jerky. I let the coals and wood burn down to white coals, this usually takes 45 to 60 minutes. Lay the meat out on the racks, and leave it. Every hour or so come out and turn the pieces of meat over. You may want to add some coals every three or four hours but not too many. If you have a thermometer to make sure that the heat stays around 160 degrees.

Now that I have converted everybody over to having their food smoked, I will be looking for a larger smoker.