MEAT!

So you want to preserve food for the Zombie Apocalypse, or you just like cured, dried meat?  I have a method that yields spicy salty meat without the need for refrigeration or cooking!  There are a few ingredients, and a couple simple tools required, but it's surprisingly easy, and VERY tasty.  I don't know exactly how much weight is lost during dehydration, but it's significant. So a 5 pound roast *might* yield a pound of dried goodness, but that's probably pushing it a bit.

I started with a venison roast, but I believe that any very lean meat will do. Beautifully marbled steaks and fatty pork will result in bitter rancid fat and other unpleasantness in your final product, so save those for the cast iron skillet or the dutch oven. I'll talk more about those techniques later. We want the leanest, cleanest, most fat free roasting chunk of meat you can find. Eye of round, or similar. Then we cut it up thin. Strips, small chunks, or even scallopini slices would work wonderfully for this process.

For the brine, we'll use equal parts soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce, a tablespoon or two of Garlic and Onion Powder, a couple teaspoons of Cayenne Pepper (leave out if you don't like the burn), a couple tablespoons of Honey, and a bit of liquid smoke. The amounts used vary depending on the amount of meat, but this should evenly coat up to two lbs of meat: 1/4 cup of wors. and 1/4 of soy, 1 TBSP of garlic and onion, a few shakes of cayenne, 2 TBSP honey, and 2tsp of liquid smoke.Optionally, just before you hang the meat to dry, you could crack some black pepper over the top for another dimension of flavor.

Throw the sliced, diced and slivered meat into the brine and stir/shake it up to make sure every bit of meat is evenly coated, and repeat the agitation every couple of hours. Let it marinate overnight or up to 24 hours in the fridge, and then we start the fun part. the skewering.

For this, we'll need some bamboo skewers, or something similar, that you can impale the flesh on that you are about to dry out.  That's right.  There's no cooking involved.  Stick the stick through one end of the meat, and slide it almost all the way to the end.  Repeat, leaving a bit of space between each of the pieces of meat. Place aluminum foil or a couple of cookie sheets in the bottom of your oven, to prevent drippage now from causing smokeage later, and dangle the punctured meat between the bars of the rack. Set the oven to as low as it can go, and prop the door open.  This accelerates the drying process, without cooking the meat. I use an oven thermometer, and make sure it never goes over 120 degrees or so.

Is it done yet?

This drying process is going to take a couple hours, I usually let it go 5 or 6 hours before removing from the oven and depositing it in a plastic tub for the last part of the drying process. If it's still quite smooshy, it's not dry enough. You can always dry it in the oven more the next day. This last drying stage happens in the Fridge in an open topped container. Best taste and storage results from a longer drying process, I prefer another day or five uncovered in the fridge. This is where the thinner slices pay off.  you can tear them off and eat them first, while the thicker slices are still drying. Once it's totally dry, then just stash somewhere to munch on when you're ready, preferably an unsealed or open container, paper bag, or something similar, so it doesn't have a chance to gather moisture.  I have no idea how long this will last, because it rarely lasts more than a week at my house before it's completely consumed.  If it gets moldy, throw it out. otherwise it's probably good for a good long time.

**sigh** i suppose i should include this again. Don't be stupid. us govt recommendations on drying your own meat.