Venison Jerky
Heidi Esau
Hunting season has wrapped for the year, and somehow I always find some random unlabelled hunks of deer meat in my freezer...likely wrapped in a garbage bag. Classy I know. Now, if you take your deer somewhere to get processed, you shouldn't have this problem, but as my husband tends to do the majority of the de-boning, there always ends up being mystery meat in the freezer. My go-to for these mystery chunks, is jerky. It seems that no matter what I start with, this jerky always ends up tasting fantastic, so none of that meat goes to waste. So, no judgment here, if you have some mystery bags of meat in your freezer, or just a few more roasts than you need, try your hand at this jerky recipe!
Ingredients:
5 to 7 pounds venison roast
1 cup soy sauce
2/3 cup white sugar
1 medium size onion, roughly chopped
1 head of garlic, peeled
7-8 ounce can of chipotles in adobo
1/2 cup water
2 tbsp lime juice
2 tbsp salt
Optional: 1 tsp Instacure #1
Instructions:
Trim your venison roast, removing all silverskin and fat. Silverskin becomes inedible ropes once it is dry, and you don't want that. Venison fat also doesn't taste good, so just remove that too.
Slice meat across the grain, about 1/4” thick slices. I find this is easiest to do if the meat is still partially frozen.
Throw all other ingredients in a blender and blend till fairly smooth.
Mix your marinade and meat slices. I like to get in there with my hands to makes sure every piece is covered, as sometimes slices will stick together otherwise and not be fully coated. You can use gloves for this if you are sensitive to chili's, but otherwise, clean hands work well.
Refrigerate the marinading meat for 24-48 hours.
Set your smoker to 175F and lay meat on racks in a single layer. Start checking your jerky around the 2 hour mark to see if it is done. This will depend on the thickness of your slices, and how dry you prefer your jerky to be. I like it to have a little give, so it's a touch chewy, and doesn't just snap, but this is personal preference.
Enjoy!
Notes:
A little note on the optional Instacure. I tend to not use a cure in my jerky, and this is for a few reasons.
We keep our jerky in the fridge or freezer
I dry my jerky at a slightly higher temperature, which would kill botulism.
If you want to keep your jerky out at room temperature for more than a day or two, I would suggest you use the Instacure. Alternately, if you want to dry your jerky at a temperature below 160F, a cure is a good idea. Some people will start drying their meat at 160F for two hours and then drop the temperature to 145F, and that works too, I just don't like to be that picky and mom duties can be a distraction, so I just do an easy 175F, and dry till done.
