Anyone have a good recipe? I use a dehydrator...

I am swimming in elk burger, and my kids love jerky... I had some in Colorado that my friend's wife had made and it was darn good...

Mostly, I'm confused about the mechanics of flavoring it. I soak (regular steak meat) strips for a few hours in my flavorings when I make regular jerky, but that won't work with "strips" of burger. Do you dry it some before flavoring it? Soak it right on the dehydrator racks? Drip the flavoring on the burger strips?

Please help this somewhat helpless Dad feed his little birds <g>.

-jeff

Best way going to kill someone with E. coli...

Make jerky with solid meat. Keep it COLD until you start drying it and do not use any fat! Fat inhibits drying and allows bacteria to grow in the wet area. Grinding increases the surface area and spreads bacteria all the way through the meat.

Lots of folks get away with it, but many do not.

I prefer solid meat jerky 100x's to burger jerky for flavor. I too am worried about the contamination possibilities in the ground meat. When I do make it out of ground meat my girlfriend gets upset and says I dried it out too much, but I get paranoid about that kind of stuff I guess.

That said, the best I've found for burger jerky is to just use one of the commercial mixes such as High Mountain seasonings. Bass Pro, Cabelas, Sportsmans, as well as a lot of the farm stores around here, etc all carry them. You can get one dedicated flavor such as hickory, mesquite, terriyaki, etc, or a variety box that has 5 or 6 different flavors to try in it. I personally like the hickory and mesquites the best. Each contains a packet of cure and a packet of seasoning. So many pounds of meat get so many teaspoons of cure and so many teaspoons of seasoning. Mix according to directions, and dehydrate. Like Sitka said, no fat! When we grind our burger meat, we don't mix anything in it, just silver skin/membrane/fat free meat goes in the grinder.

Well, there's no added fat in my elk, so that's good... And I processed the critters myself, so that's good... But poisoning my family is way down my to-do list so maybe I'll rethink this.

My family should have died ages ago, then. When my kids were in school, I made a lot of jerky with ground venison. There are many recipes available. We ate it at such a rate that I would have the first deer of the season ground into burger, except for the backstraps.

I just finished my first attempt at venison jerky in years. All I can say is buy a jerky shooter, High Mountain spices and follow the instructions. I used ground venison with no fat added and the hickory flavor and it is wonderful. Just an fyi, skip the dehydrator and use either a smoker or the oven, I have finished three batches in the oven and the dehydrator still is not through cooking(4 hours vs 1.5 hours in the oven.)

eddie

What tansinator said....

Also, Me and my family should have died years ago from jerky made of burger! Boys loved it when I shipped it to Iraq. I guess their friends should all be dead now too.......some people worry way too much! Heck you could die from eating any meat!

Just to be safe I will come pick up all your elk burger! You didn't shoot it with a lead bullet did you?

I used the dreaded Accubond. The bullet blew up on the hide of the elk, just leaving a bare patch of hide and grey smoke in the air! Luckily, someone had dropped some .325 WSM rounds loaded with the mighty mighty TSX on the ground, so I picked one up and shot the elk with that and it not only killed the elk, it penetrated all the way through the ridge behind the elk, boomeranged back my way, and plopped into my shirt pocket so that I could toss it in my non-ferrous-metal recycling bin!

Hell of a bullet <grin>...

You know what, I agree with you guys... I ground this elk myself (both of them) in known-good conditions and besides, in college one of my life sayings was "you can't live your life in fear of food poisoning!" :-) More seriously, my wife and I come from the "let them eat dirt" school of parenting and my kids have iron stomachs. Knock on wood <g>.

So to that end, I have a pack of burger defrosting even as we speak. I'll try something simple like teriyaki garlic this first small batch, see how it goes....

I like both types of jerky but find it easier and more convieniet to use ground meat and a dehydrator.
Last batch I did was with a grocery store package of ground buffalo.
Turned out really good.

Only think I find is that it doesnt last. People start eating it and its gone ASAP.

Agreed, if I do my part (with regular jerky anyway) the kids DEMOLISH it. Which is sort of the idea. I have SOOOOO much elk burger to get eaten up... a good problem, yeah, but with both our freezers full to the brim, a problem!

My first batch is out in the dehydrator as I type! Was gonna make it teriyaki and garlic and black pepper, but found out I'm almost out of teriyaki. So it ended up being sort of a chipolte barbeque... with garlic salt and onion salt and a couple other things <g>. the usual mishmash I do when I make jerky.

Jeff,


I used to buy the Hi Mountain Jerky seasoning. It was expensive at the local brocery store. So I called them to ask if I could buy in bulk and at that time they told me no and were a bit indignant about it. I think they do now, but I figured out how to make the stuff myself out of several ingredients.

Keith

Laugh all you want about it and ignore the advice... People have died from E. coli in burger jerky. Most commercial mixes have enough nitrates and nitrites to kill the stuff and allow the jerky to dry before enough bacteria can grow to make a big problem.

Lots of folks find jerky upsets their stomachs a little and they assume it is the spices or dryness, or whatever... It is likely a small dose of bad bacteria.

I heartily agree with the little bit of dirt philosophy. Problem is the risk:reward ratio gets severely unbalanced with burger jerky, especially if there is fat added.

One more time for those too slow to have caught it the first time around;

Solid meat has some bacteria on the surface. All of it has it.

Solid meat dries on the surfaces and stops bacterial growth rapidly.

Ground meat had bacteria on the surfaces but it was mixed throughout the meat by grinding.

Ground meat allows bacteria to grow inside until the moisture content drops to about 8%.

A small hiccup in the process or a batch of burger allowed to grow a bit more bacteria before grinding or while waiting to be packaged can be an unspeakably bad thing.

Call it anything you want but it is beyond foolish to make burger jerky, period. If you cannot figure that out from the above you should go back to licking windows on the short bus...

Art,

With all due respect. Give it a rest ok.

Thats good advice from Art. I never made jerky from burger though I almost did with my moose about 5yrs ago. I never will now!

Little ones are too precious. Screw burger jerky!

Thanks Art!

MtnHtr

Keith
If you like the risk:reward ratio have at it... Low risk with ridiculously high potential consequences and tiny reward... Stay away from Vegas...
art

Art,

A friend of mine died of a heart attack last night after being bedridden for 4 weeks. He was in his mid 50's. I just am not going to worry about every little thing that "might" hurt me. I do appreciate your concern, but I am going to enjoy life while I have it. Last night really hit home about alot of things.

And to the others here if they choose not to make jerky with burger, then that can be their choice. To each his own my friend.

P.S. I own the short bus!

Keith

Hey can I catch a ride??

Maybe we shouldn't eat sausage any more because it's made with ground meat and fat!
One of the biggest issues with "burger" jerky is the people who buy commercially ground meat and then make jerky out of it. If your paranoid about e coli then don't eat store bought ground meat. The issue there is the commercial grinders that don't get cleaned frequently enough and cross contamination from the grinders and the processing area in general.
If you have meat that is contaminated with e coli it's not going to make a tinkers darn if it's solid muscle or ground. Contaminated meat is just that. You don't just "grow" e coli. The meat has to have been exposed to the bacteria at some point. The time you should be concearned about this with game is if you get a gut shot animal or puncture the bowels when your gutting the animal. Any one who has ever seen gut soup in a cavity will know what I'm talking about.
The best thing to remember is that your are dealing with decaying animal flesh. Cook or hot smoke the jerky and stay within the safety zones. Any meat exposed to temps over 40 degrees and under 140 for more than three hours is growing bacteria. If you are making ground jerky in the oven you should be looking at 1-2 hours at 200 degrees. If your oven doesn't go that low prop the door open with a wooden spoon. In either event you should be well within the standard safe HACCP range.

I was Googlin' around on this issue and found this site:

http://www.hoptechno.com/bookjerky.htm

A quote:

"A recent study by the Harrisons and Ruth Ann Rose, also with the University of Georgia, was published in the January 1998 Journal of Food Protection, Vol. 61, No. 1. The authors analyzed ground beef jerky made with a commercial beef jerky spice mixture with and without a curing mix containing salt and sodium nitrite.

Half of the ground beef was inoculated with E. coli O157:H7 before making it into jerky strips and dehydrating it. The authors found that in both the heated and unheated samples, the jerky made with the curing mix had greater destruction of bacteria than jerky made without it. The jerky made with the mix and heated before dehydrating had the highest destruction rate of bacteria.

They concluded, "For ground beef jerky prepared at home, safety concerns related to E. coli O157:H7 are minimized if the meat is precooked to 160 F prior to drying."

That makes a lot of sense to me...

-jeff

Precook your meat to 160 and get back to us on what it is like. Big things happen at 140, for a clue.

Also, put lots of that nitrate and nitrate crap in your kids. Makes a ton of sense to give them good clean additive-free meat... loaded up with the rest... Sheesh!

Keith
Sorry about your loss, that is far too young for good people to leave.

A final thought... Lots of folks gamble with fast cars, motorcycles or religion. Lots of folks get away with a total disregard for faith and you probably find that hard to believe. You probably do not see it as an effort to believe.

I do not see it as an effort to stick to solid meat jerky, without the crap in it.

There have been many studies done... and for a reason.

Again, sorry for the loss of your friend.
art

Art, no nitrates nor nitrates for me. That sort of misses the whole point; we agree about that.

Still researching this. Your opinion is noted and appreciated, Art, though as usual your confrontational style reduces the palatability of the message (like how I snuck a cooking reference in there?).

Your article is really talking about dehumidifying jerky. I would stick to smoking or baking ground jerky. As your article suggests 155-160 is the accepted standard to kill e coli. This is important if you use store ground meat or meat that you did not personally process. What you do not want to do is hold meat under 140 for more than the three hour guide line as this promotes bacteria growth and e coli is not the only bad germ on the block. Your article indicates that a lot of venison has a higher ecoli rate due to poor handeling by hunters. Boy do I ever dissagree with that. FDA plants can be a bad joke. Some of the nastiest places I have seen have been FDA approved. Worse yet one of the primary ways that e coli is introduced to food is by dirty hands. The more people that handle your food....The higher the risk.
You do not have to use nitrates to cure your meat. Sugar, salt and smoking are just a few of the traditional methods of curing. However the incredibly minuscule amount of nitrates that you would require for a batch of jerky if you do want to hold between 40 and 140 for more than three hours is absolutly nominal compared to the health issues associated with soda or even the hydrogenated oil in peanut butter. Basicly that's a non-issue unless you have a cancer patient or some one else with serious health issues that requires steroid and anti-biotic free flesh. In that case, don't feed them ground jerky! LOL
In short you can subscribe to the chicken liitle theory or you can use good common sense and judgement. As far as fat and moisture content consider that many sausages are hung and left until they grow mold! People have been eating meat with bacteria a lot longer than refrigeration has been around. I can't even imagine how many tons of hunters sausage Kowalski sells here in a year and trust me, there's plenty of fat in that ground meat product.

Stetson, thanks. I processed it myself and added no fat. I'm pretty picky about what goes in the grinder; just ask my dog who got to gorge on all the stuff I DIDN'T grind <g>. My shop is a regular old shop for working with metal and wood, so I can't imagine that I have an E. Coli culture going out there...

I made trial batch in the dehydrator. Ate some today-delicious! If I die, you'll know because I stopped posting, which would make Sitka happy anyway <grin>.

However, I am taking this thread, with it's differing opinions, seriously. I NEED to be able to make jerky out of burger; so then the question is how do I do it in absolute safety.

For absolute safety;
1) Use meat you grind.
2) Keep your work area and equipment clean.
3) Follow the HACCP temperature guidelines. Experiement a bit. Not all countries agree on the temp required to kill e coli. Some feel an internal temp of 70 degrees for two minutes is adequate. So again you have to use common sense based on your product and cooking method.
Finally if you want to be very safe use an appropriate amount of sodium nitrate. The amount needed for a batch of ground meat jerky is absolutly nominal. This is one of the very few times I think highly of a pre made seasoning blend like the Hi Mountain products. Excellent quality and they alredy contain the appropriate amount of nitrates.

One last little tidbit... a lot of store-bought jerky is made from ground meat too. You'll recognize the "muscle meat jerky" when you see it. The ground stuff is just totally smooth, and looks like it's been formed flat. Which it has... You do need to be careful when preparing it, though. The 160 degree oven sounds reasonable.

Stetson
"For absolute safety;"

You are a pathetic joke! Fountain of "absolute" knowledge...
art just shaking his head with pathos

If it makes you feel better Art by all means feel free to replace "absolute" with ......."To follow the FDA HACCP guidlines for safety".
After all nothing is absolute except death, taxes and realizing that your narcissism really can't be controlled with medication.

My intent is to find a safe way to make burger jerky, if such a thing is possible. To that end, Art's comments about how UNsafe it is are appreciated as caution signs at a minimum.

Everyone else's comments are very much appreciated too... I'd really like to stay away from nitrates, but, I'll give that some research too.

My kids will eat jerky like there's no tomorrow, but I'd really rather not be using up my nice round steaks on it. I have more burger than I'll be able to cram down their gullets before it freezer burns, hence my desire to find a way to jerk it safely.

"There has to be a way!" This is America, after all! :-)

Why do you grind so much? Just save your front shoulders for whole muscle jerky.

Well, I kept pretty much all possible steaks and stew chunks as, well, steaks and stew chunks.

Thing is, I killed two large elk and a decent buck this year; the elk especially just made for a lot of burger....

For anyone that has not made burger jerky and is intending to try it with Stetson's suggestions: Please save your meat.

Jerky is a dried, not cooked, product. Doing as the government says and literally cooking it at 200 degrees... or getting the internal temperature to 160... will produce an inedible, though safe, piece of trash.

For some strange reason Stetson feels compelled to give advice on a subject he clearly knows nothing about beyond what he Googled. Because he has never tried what he suggested he has nothing but a guess to go on and nothing of value to offer.

He will of course present us with his personal physician's opinion to bolster his position and "prove he is right."

Anyone that has tried to make jerky already knows what happens when it gets too hot. I tried to make jerky by the governement directives on more than one occasion and had exacting control. It sucked.
art not guessing

Wow. No idea WTF that's about but it looks like you really are off your meds. Maybe a dancing pickle will make your personal "physician" a little happier. I rather doubt they are getting enough!

I have a dehydrator that uses get this heat like 155* and a fan to warm and dehydrate the meat over time. Now that temp ironically is in bacteria killing range, so to smoke houses have heat and to properly smoke some things it requires a certain temp. As opposed to cold smoked items which are also cured with salt/nitrates.

Some low level of nitrates, salt and heat to 155 dehydrating will make absolutely fine and safe jerky. It's not all or nothing people. The small amount of nitrates aren't such an issue as compared to a commercial product or to the added hormones and drugs in commercial meat.

Link to Ground Recipe

I have used this one in the smoker...........just add a splash of 'liquid smoke' to the recipe.........if used in a dehydrator.

More ground venison recipes

I think that the [spicy sweet .........] look simple and yummy!

I roll them into 'pies' and cut them into strip after they harden.

have made huge amounts of jerky-both methods.prefer whole sliced but ground works too.
flatten a spare sausage stuffer tube to desired thickness and proceed.
mostly use the outdoor smoker sans nitrates/nitrites...

but have used liquid smoke/cures as well with good results and drying on oven racks over the wood stove.

lots of fat bellies and no deaths/sickness to date.

just use proper precautions when dealing with raw meat.

Now that's a darn good idea!

I have tried both the ground and solid jerky. I used the High Mountain stuff,but still never liked it. I went back to buying it at Sam's Club in bulk, and using the meat in differnt ways

Jeff, I would not worry about using up the ground meat. It will keep in the feezer. Especially since you added no fat. You might have another few dry years.Having meat in the freezer is like having money in the bank.Since I zeroed out this year,my 07 elk and deer will strecth out to 09 with the deer I got this year to supplement it.

Start making more tacos, chili, spaghetti sauces. Used those front shoulders for roast next time and start using a crock pot.

No fat added hamburgers cooked on the grill are about as good as steak.

Cornell University conducted a study which basically states that feeding cattle in feedlots huge amounts of corn, results in e coli that is resistant to human stomach acid. Simply changing the beef diet to grass, greatly reduced the risk of the e coli to humans.

I process a lot of ground venison jerky and have never had an issue. Nor do I anticipate having one. YMMV and life is full of risks, I just don't think this is one that concerns me.

http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Sept98/acid.relief.hrs.html

From the Cornell article;

"When meat is contaminated with cattle feces at slaughter or fruit and vegetables are fertilized with manure, E. coli O157:H7 can enter the human food supply. In day-care facilities and nursing homes, fecal contamination is the vehicle for person-to-person infection"

Bottom line is keep your feces and your food seperate. A bit disgusting but true. Same applies to consuming non-pasteurized apple juice or cider. If the apples used in the juice were those collected from the ground.... deer like apples, deer poo in the orchard and there have been out breaks attributed to that. Unfortunatly I suspect many of us know what migrant workers and illigals are doing in those vegetable fields and the near by watering ditches.
The risk is minimal in most venison since we should all have intimate knowledge of exactly how that flesh was handled assuming you didn't take it in for processing. That could be another whole thread. Many game processers here don't even give you back your own venison. They go strictly by weight. If you can process your own meat your light years ahead in food safety IMO.

Next thing you know they will be telling us we cant drink out of the toilet anymore. What is this world coming to?

I figure all that crap on the hide from elk wallowing etc is the best reason to get the hide off right away. It would be like killing a beef in the pen, gutting it, out and then dragging it out