AusVarmint

Since the missus is away down the coast for a funeral, I have been doing a few bloke type domestic things.

First off, on Thursday morning I went to the butchers and bought a whole top side of beef which I got him to slice into 1/4 inch slices, brought it home and mixed up a marinade for it, then sat it in the fridge over night. My first attempt at making jerky.
The special plastic container is made for marinading stuff, seals up well and every now and then flip it over and the marinade and juices go back through what ever you have in there.

Then got out the Sunbeam food dryer, that has been sitting in the cupboard for a couple or three years now, used it a couple of times to dry some prune plumbs, they turned out to be exceptionally eatable, but more than half a dozen a day would nearly turn the innards to the outards. Fruit fly and my tree dying put a stop to that. So I reckon jerky is the go.
Whacked half the meat slices in to dry for 8 hours, the other half went back into the marinade, but this time I added a couple of spoons of minced chilli to the mix. The missus wont eat chilli so if I want to tempt her into eating some jerky, I have to make a special batch for her.
On Friday morning after it had dried out nicely, I put the other half in and left it till around 5 that afternoon. I must say it is extremely eatable, not too dry, not too hot, just right, although I will be adding some honey and liquid smoke when I make the next batch, I may even try some of the commercial marinades that are out there.

Drool ya buggers.

Last Monday after skinning the rabbits I had in the chiller, I ended up with 5 pair of nice large rabbits that I had stuffed up when shooting, usually on the long shots and the bullet drops down into the neck/top of the shoulder and cause a fair bit of bruising, cant sell em, so I bring them home, bone them out and the dogs get the bruised stuff and the frames for a treat. I like to leave the meat in the fridge to set for a few days before I run it through the mincer.

Today I did the mincing and ended up with 5 1/2 kg of nice fresh rabbit mince, a good way to recover something useful out of my stuff ups.

Lasagne for tea tonight, made from a mix of rabbit and beef mince. YUMMY

Mate if you use those pills on the right you can skip the "putting them in the fridge to set" step. Infact, you can skip the skinning and boning as well.

i had a go a while back at making rabbit mince rissoles.
alas,the meat is so rich,heavy and clingy the rissoles would have had to be smaller than a golf ball to be eatable.
i put hamburger helper in one batch to try and break it down a bit,but that batch tasted bloody awful.

tunnel mutton does make a good stir fry though...

have you tryed doing tunnel mutton jerky camel ?

Sorry to disappoint you Grimo, but those projectiles go a bit too fast for my rabbit shooting, although I did hit one through the eye the other night and it didn't do too much damage. They are very good on foxes, cats and the odd grasshopper. I hope that I will be able to use a fair few of them in the next few months.

Lonerider, I have used rabbit mince for things like meatballs with sauce, they do need extra juicy stuff. Havent tried rabbit jerky, but may have a go later on.

Why did you buy beef instead of just shooting a goat and making jerky out of that?
It does look good though.

The Jerky looks good Camel, how did it taste?

DSD wrote:Why did you buy beef instead of just shooting a goat and making jerky out of that?
It does look good though.

I wanted it to turn out good for the first effort. The local butcher did me a good deal, beside that there isn't that much meat that would be good for jerky on a goat, and there is a heap of work cutting all the fat out of them, cutting the sheath off the muscle. Winter time would be ok as I could take my time, will give it a go.

Scott, the jerky came out fantastic, would like it to have a bit more sticky texture on the outside, but I have had 5 people have a go and they all reckoned it was bloody good.

I will have to send some down to old mate Daisy, if he will pm me his address Ill get some off.

Hmmmmm, now I need to get one of those vacuum packer thingamajiggies to store it.

I always thought jerky was a terrible way to eat meat. That was until I tried some at the missedathon. Beer, jerky and flooding rain, ahh the memories

Have you done a Rabbit Jerky? could be worth a crack to see how it goes.

Considering how cheap those sunbeam dehydrators are, they do a great job.

kickinback wrote:Considering how cheap those sunbeam dehydrators are, they do a great job.

I hope its not this model - don't sound real flash going by the reviews on it.

http://www.productreview.com.au/p/sunbe ... rator.html

That's the one. It works great. Instead of reading what some fuckwit thinks you should try one for yourself.

kickinback wrote:That's the one. It works great. Instead of reading what some fuckwit thinks you should try one for yourself.

I think I will give that one a miss and look for something with a better rep I think. Sounds like they have a few issues.

How long have you had your's for mate?

kickinback wrote:Considering how cheap those sunbeam dehydrators are, they do a great job.

Yeah very happy with mine, had it for years now and I spose un that time its run for over 200 hours or more, never missed a beat, I would get another one if this one craps out. Either that or I build myself a hot smoker in the back yard. I am one of those who doesn't believe everything I see on the internet.