Last week I made a batch of jerky, mostly to prove to myself I could do it. I’m planning to make some to take on a canoe trip in August with East Texas Red. After I had devoured the first batch, E.T. Red commented that it would be OK if I mailed him some for taste testing. I think I was finishing the last piece as I read his text.

And so… I made another batch to send to beautiful Perth Ontario. Batch 2 differs from batch 1 in 2 ways. First I sliced the beef and doused it in marinade before going to bed, so it marinated overnight. I’m going to say that having tried marinating for 2 hours and for overnight, it really doesn’t matter. Overnight is fine. Two hours is fine. I don’t know what the bare minimum time should be though. Also, I used different ingredients in my marinade this time. Instead of soy and worcestershire, I used Korean BBQ marinade. I forgot to add fish sauce this time, but I did add some 5-spice powder and I think this time I added more brown sugar to the marinade. For both batches I used smoked paprika. For the second batch I used less cayenne.

Both batches were tremendously yummy, just different. I packed up a good bag of jerky and sent it by Xpresspost to Perth before I sampled batch 2 until it was no more. Hopefully East Texas Red will enjoy it.

My brother the trout, Salvilinas Fontinalis, told me that the best jerky is made with elk. He could be right, but I’m fresh out of elk. If anybody has some elk they’d like to lay on me for test batch #3, you know where to drop it off.