Beef Jerky & Air Fryer

Beef jerky

My son in law Karl makes beef jerky. I'd never really bothered with it before, it looks lika a bit of shoe leather and seeing people eat it, it looks like they are eating shoe leather.
He created a few different batches and has very kindly given them to me, and they dissapear very quickly, they are very morish.  The saltiness makes you drink more beer, so that is good. And a good protien snack.
If I was in a shop I wouldn't buy them as they are small packetsand expensive and I'd rather have a packet of chips or even pork crackling instead.
I was looking at some snacks I could make with an air fryer and on one video they made beef jerky. So I thought i'd give it a try.
I like this chaps videos and in this one he makes Beef Jerky as he test drives an air fryer. 

His results wern't that great so I looked at a few more.
It seemed to me that getting the beef cut and slicing were important. Obvious really, better ingredients usually give you better results.
The slicing into regular widths was a concern as my cutting can be a bit eratic.
Then I thought, Beef Snitzel!!! I had some in the freezer and it is already sliced very thinly, so all I had to do was cut a bit of the fat off it. The fat does taste different than the meat.
So I thawed the meat and have just sliced it up.
Of the spices I do like the hot spicy ones so I thought, as this is my first try, I'd bung in a lot of the basic ingredients and see how it turns out. If it works then I'll start to do a bit more research and be a bit more scientific about it. Also maybe get some tips from Karl.
So, I've chucked a bit of Soy Sauce, brown sugar, Sarachi, Smoked paprica, Garlic salt, Lee Perin, pepper, chilli flakes and apple vinegar into a container and have put the strips into the mix to soak overnight in the fridge.

So phase 1 done.
I like the beef snitzel cut as they are quick to cook and make good Beef Stroganoff, a lovely hearty winter meal. In my budget concious state, it is expensive, so I only buty it when its on special and freeze a few batches.
Karl says dry out at 70 dec C but Air fryer only goes down to 80 deg C, so I'll do on that setting. The other video says 30 minutes, I'll start with that too.

Drying

I used an 80 deg C setting and  hung the meat on a ring I had, I wasa able to get all the pieces in. I set it for 30 minutes and after 20 min they were still pretty moit, so I've added another 30 minutes to the timer.

 

The drying process, I ramped it up to 100 Deg C after 60 min and ran that for about another 30 mins. Some parts were quite descicated, others still moist.

 After picking a couple of bits out I ended up with about 175 g of Jerky, sop put into 3 servings of 50g and one of 25g. Not such a lot for such a process. 

Very salty and a bit sweet, and not that hot or peppery but tasty, but I think thats the salt. I've got the 25g pack to have with the beer tonight. 

I kept the left over juices for another marinade but I may toss it as the blood in the meat may not be too good. 

 I think I'd try again, but I need a better recipe for the mix as its a bit too salty and sweet, whereas I like the pepper and chilli flavour. 

Curing & Storing both Jerky & Biltong

Apparently mould can start growing after about day 5-6, epending on humidity. So that is why dry time about 4 days for Biltong, so that it doesn't start growing mould.
I put the beref jerky into bags, it was a bit moist, but I used a straw to suck out the air and left it in a cupboard. I'd done the drying on the 23rd, today the 26th and there was a bit of while on the outside of one of the bags. I think air had slowly got into the packet.
So, lesson, meat, moist, mould.
I think I should put some tissue paper in to absorb some of the moisture ( some have the salt crystal bags) and also put into the fridge.
They say the flavour changes if you put into the freezer, so I'll need to test some of the pieces doing that, to test flavour change, bith the Jerky and the Biltong.

Mince jerky? Worth a crack Nigel

This looks a bit wierd but may be worth a test, using mince and then rolling and drying: