Kosher Doshers Koshcuterie {kosh-koo-tur-ee}: Raspberry Chipotle Jerky

Raspberries & Meat what's not to love. I decided to make another jerky but this time I took notes, wrote down the recipe and took pictures. It's quite simple to do and the ingredients are easily available.

Take one 32 oz jar of of Raspberry preserves (or you can use jam) two 7 oz cans of Chipotle in adobo sauce and puree in a blender. You can make more or less it's up to you. Heck choose a different fruit if you want. Add more heat or less heat. This is more about technique than a recipe. Note: I tried fresh Raspberries but I couldn't get the flavor to come through as much as the preserves. Don't worry I will have recipe below with details.

When it comes to safety I don't take any shortcuts hence my use of Cure # 1. My use of Cure # 1 is not just about food safety but overall taste too. The basic rule is this; if you plan on cold smoking than use Cure # 1 and if you can't use Cure # 1 don't cold smoke. If you want to know why I use Cure # 1 I suggest the following LINK.

I will quickly summarize quickly below why I use the cure # 1. I plan on cold smoking and dehydrating at a very low temp which is the perfect breeding ground for Botulism and a slew of other nasty things. Curing with cure # 1 will mitigate some of my concerns.
In addition I plan on dehydrating below a AW of .85 which also keeps bacteria at bay.

It's worth noting that a simple google search will give you a slew of opinions on how to make safe jerky at home (click the link above). I will list a few here. One common technique is to bring jerky and marinade up to an internal temp of 160 f degrees either by roasting, steaming or poaching. After this temperature is reach proceed with dehydration at 145 degrees or higher. One other popular technique is to roast finished product in an oven at 275 F degree for about 10 minutes and bring internal temp up to 160 f degrees. This will no doubt will make safe jerky but probably not the best tasting jerky.

What a lot of people don't realize is food can become pasteurized utilizing both time and temp. The lower the temp the longer you have to cook the product to pasteurize. The higher the temp shorter cooking times will suffice. I.E. Meat held at 165 F degrees for a mere 2.13 seconds will be pasteurized. Hamburger a mere 1.64 seconds. At 140 F degrees a mere 11.23 seconds and hamburger 8.64 seconds. Let me clarify one point just to make sure you understand. Once the product has reached an interval temp of X you must hold that internal temp for Y seconds or minutes to pasteurize. I want to add that if you ever had a rare steak or had a rare hamburger than eating jerky cooked at a low temp should not bother you.

Here's another technique or rather a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin on eliminating food-borne diseases. The study concluded that the minimal temperatures required for cooking beef jerky is 125 F for 10 hours, 135 F for 9 hours, 145 F for 7 hours and 155 F for 4 1/2 hours. Not wrong just a different way of making jerky.

To a Blender add.....

32 ounce Jar of Raspberry Preserves or Jam
2 7 oz jars of Chipotle in Adobo sauce
1 cup of sugar or which every sweetener you prefer.
1/8 cup of Garlic Powder
1/8 cup of Onion Powder
1 cup of water
2.5% of salt relative to the total weight of sauce and meat.
.25% of Cure # 1 relative to the total weight of the sauce and the meat.

This is the tricky part so pay attention. Weigh everything and convert it to grams. Grams is much easier to to work with than U.S Standard Math. Conversion Math Link

The total Meat weight was 6.09 lbs which equals 2762.378 and the sauce weight was 60 oz which equals 1700.97. Add the meat weight in grams 2762.378 to the sauce weight in grams 1700.97= 4463.348.

To find out the amount of salt & Cure perform the following calculations.

SALT NEEDED
4463.348g * 2.5%= 111.5837g or 4463.348/100 * 2.5 = 111.5837g

CURE NEEDED
4463.348 * .25%= 11.15837 or 4463.348/100 * .25 = 11.15837

Note: I intentionally did not round up/down to show you that if you want you can be extremely precise.

Note: The recipe can be used to make 12 lbs of jerky so modify at your discretion. If you want to increase salt go for it just do the math correctly. I would not go below 2 % for food safety reasons. The caveat to the 2% suggestion is if you know the recipes that you are using or creating has a salty ingredient like Soy sauce or Fish sauce you might want to go below 2% to avoid over salting your food. And always use .25% (equals 156 pp of Sodium Nitrite) of Cure # 1. Let's say you only want to make half the sauce or you want to triple what would you do? The math remains the same. Calculate total weight and apply formula above.

Just so there is no confusion as to what I am saying I will recap. Make as much or as little sauce as you want, weigh the sauce in grams, weigh the meat in grams, take total weight of sauce and meat in grams and calculate Salt % and Cure # 1 % using formula above.

Sauce all pureed up!!!!

I purchased 2 London Broil chunks of meat (Top Round) for my jerky but any lean meat will do.

I first partially froze the meat which made it much easier to slice and remove excess fat.

Trimmed up and ready for the sauce. I actually missed a few spots of fat and trimmed them up after photo was taken. I sliced my meat about 3/8 of inch thick.

Meat will cure for at least 3 days. This is an equilibrium cure so if you go longer than 3 days not a big deal.

As you can tell I did not rinse off any of the sauce. My idea here was to have the sauce dehydrate on the meat to produce maximum flavor. After three days I placed the slices on trays and cold smoked between 4 and 6 hours.

This batch cold smoked for about 5.5 hours. Ambient temps outside were in the low 50's.

After the cold smoking I placed the double jerky rack in my commercial oven and set the thermostat at 155 degrees. I dehydrated the jerky at 155 f for 2 hours because it was really wet and finished up at 126 f degrees. So when did I pull out the jerky? When it was done. Not to sound like a smart ass but "Done" is subjective. My personal preference is to have the jerky be able to bend in the middle without breaking. It should not feel greasy when handled. It should feel good in your mouth and not feel like shoe leather.