Beef jerkey and Period food preservation

[sabrewolfe]

Sorry no internet connection at home due too a useless supplier of broadband services who shall go un-named for fear of being admonished by "The Power" for libel.

Anyway ok first batch was a total unadulterated disaster. The meat I used had too much fat and i did not allow adequete time to dry the meat out. I was unwilling to leave stuff overnight in the oven so I kinda had to turn it off and on a bit over a few days................ anyway total balls up ended up with tasteless greasy meat.

Things I have learned.
Make sure there is no fat what so ever on the meat
Do not use bits of meat that are paper thin
Allow plenty of time to do this at least sixteen hours or more.
Lamb may not be the best meat too do this with granted it smelled great but I fecked up.


Anyway I have a net connection at home again (nearly 8 weeks later) so I will try this experiment again the weekend after Kilmallock. Hopefully I have more success. Im kinda tempted too order a proper dehydrater (SP) off ebay so I can do this properly without bollixing my oven

[Billy]

In response,

Early Irish Farming by Fergus Kelly has a wealth of information on food from the early medieval period.

I highly recommend buying it.

[sabrewolfe]

I know some people hate when old threads are revived but I thought I would update this to recommend that if people can get their hands on a food dryer or dehydrator it makes jerky so much easier. Finally managed to get one new for less than fifty quid (from an Irish company ) and redid the jerky making using what I learned the last time, i.e. no fat on the lean meat not too thin and well marinated. Let me just say it works great, again dont know how long it would last in storage as I devoured it all once it was done. New lesson learned dont empty a food dehydrator when hungry.

So i suppose as a continuation to this what kind of foods other than meat would have been dried to preserve them. Now next step lethally spicy jerky