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#48503 - 09/09/05 11:10 PM Re: Dried jerky meat suitable storm preparation fo
Wellspring Offline
journeyman

Registered: 10/08/03
Posts: 54
Alton Brown is phenomenal. I can't attest to his preparedness, but his cooking shows are fun (a little gimmicky, but informative), and none of his cookbook recipes have gone wrong for me.

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#48504 - 09/09/05 11:14 PM Re: Dried jerky meat suitable storm preparation fo
Wellspring Offline
journeyman

Registered: 10/08/03
Posts: 54
Can anyone recommend a brand?

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#48505 - 09/10/05 12:13 AM Re: Dried jerky meat suitable storm preparation fo
Anonymous
Unregistered


I just got fall 2005 Cabellas catalog, and there are a bunch in there.

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#48506 - 09/10/05 01:37 AM Re: Dried jerky meat suitable storm preparation food?
Anonymous
Unregistered


What about using vacume sealing to extend the life of the jerky?

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#48507 - 09/10/05 01:56 AM Re: Dried jerky meat suitable storm preparation food?
CJK Offline
Addict

Registered: 08/14/05
Posts: 601
Loc: FL, USA
The only thing I have to go on is the good eats show....he said you should not put it into any 'plastic' bags as the bags hold the moisture right up against it and spoils it faster. He recommended to store it in a plastic hardside container.

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#48508 - 09/10/05 02:02 AM Re: Dried jerky meat suitable storm preparation fo
Anonymous
Unregistered


True. If you vac pack, either eat it, or freeze it.

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#48509 - 09/10/05 10:59 AM Re: Dried jerky meat suitable storm preparation fo
norad45 Offline
Veteran

Registered: 07/01/04
Posts: 1506
That's a good point about the salt. Most recipes I've seen tell you to marinate the strips overnight. The next batch I make I'm going to try simply coating the strips before drying them. That way (hopefully) only the outer layer will be salted. That's the only part that needs protection from mold anyway.

Regards, Vince

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#48510 - 09/12/05 04:07 AM Re: Dried jerky meat suitable storm preparation fo
Raspy Offline
Enthusiast

Registered: 01/08/04
Posts: 351
Loc: Centre Hall Pa
Most commercial jerky is way over salted. By doing it yourself you can control the amount. You do need some salt though. What it does is dehydrate any of the critters that try to grow on your meat. A friend Vlad by name has created what he calles a meat shake as part of his normal diet and as part of his food storage plans. Appearently he consummes them regularly. He grinds his homemade jerky into a powder.

meat shake
- one cup meat powder (=10 oz fresh meat, 50 protein grams)
- 1-1/2 oz vegetable oil
- 1 teaspoon ground cayenne
- 1/4 teaspoon yellow curry
- 0ne pint filtered water........shake well..
_________________________
When in danger or in doubt
run in circles scream and shout
RAH

And always remember TANSTAAFL

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#48511 - 09/12/05 01:33 PM Re: Dried jerky meat suitable storm preparation fo
benjammin Offline
Rapscallion
Carpal Tunnel

Registered: 02/06/04
Posts: 4020
Loc: Anchorage AK
Okay, we are talking about curing meat for survival preparations. Folks, how many times do I gotta repeat this: Pemmican is THE natural survival food. Let's take a look again at why this is.

Dried, smoked, cured meat. Okay the old fashioned method of curing meat was to air dry it or use a smoke house after brining the meat using a salt/sugar cure. Nowadays meat is cured using commercial curing compounds based on nitrites and nitrates, benzoates, erythorbates etc. Yeah, I know everyone is going to say "Gee all those preservatives, that can't be good for you". Well, how many hams, hot dogs, pepperoni pizzas, bologna sandwiches have we all eaten in our lives? I think the old fashioned salt cure was a lot worse on the body than this stuff is. Smoke cure, well, wood smoke has at least 11 known carcinogens in it. But it does make it taste better. The plains indians had a good idea of how to preserve a 6 month supply of bison by planking it in front of a big fire and letting it dry out, then packing it in clean skins coated with generous amounts of rendered fat (hmm, getting closer to the Pemmican concept). How they kept the meat from spoiling without a lot of chemicals, good storage techniques, or environmental controls must pretty much confound us modern day hunter gatherers.

So, what can we do with all that dried, smoked, salted meat? Well, we can break it down using grinders, molcahetes (mexican grinders by Manuel), or just beating the snot out of it with a couple of big stones. Once it is broken down sufficiently to be handled, we can mix it with some seeds, nuts, dried berries, dried fruits, dried vegetables, dried grains, and a little tallow. Wrap it with some saran wrap a few times, wrap it with aluminum foil a few times, and pack it away in the freezer, the refrigerator, the cupboard, a grub box, whatever your needs. When you are afoot somewhere, take a ball or two of this stuff with you. If your regular supplies should run out, or you find yourself in a "survival" situation, break out a ball and start eating. Want something warm instead, mix part of a ball with some boiling hot water for a few minutes and enjoy a hearty nourishing soup. I've had pemican balls packed thus unrefrigerated for nearly a year, and was just as good the day I used it as it was the day I made it. I've heard other folks who've used pemmican balls nearly two years old and incurred no problems. Yes, it is high in fat. Yes it has a certain amount of salt in it. Yes, you will need to consume water to digest it. Guess what, if I need to conserve water, I probably ain't gonna eat anything until I can find a decent supply.

So there, if you want to store meat for survival, do what the indians did. Either pack it in tallow, or turn it into pemmican. Forget the nutritional fo-pahs about consuming too much salt or fat, in a survival mode, you're likely to need more of both anyways, assuming you have a fresh water source to work with.

If it worked for native americans and fur trappers and explorers for hundreds of years, there must be a reason. It was the number one preferred survival food for them all that time. Of course the Army thought they could improve on this, thus the first "survival" rations our nation tried in the Civil War, mostly hard flat bread. Anyone else ever hear the reviews on how well that stuff was liked by the troops that ate it?

There are likely a lot of folks out there that haven't the pallette to handle pemmican. Our sedentary lifestyles have made us prone to avoiding such rich foods, which is a good thing, because most of us can't handle consuming 3,000 kcals per meal. But when you are humping hard just to get by, and everything you own is on your back and you've been hodding it around all day, your body will tell your tastebuds that it is just fine, trust me.
_________________________
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
-- Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)

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#48514 - 09/13/05 11:32 AM Re: Dried jerky meat suitable storm preparation fo
Wellspring Offline
journeyman

Registered: 10/08/03
Posts: 54
Quote:
So there, if you want to store meat for survival, do what the indians did. Either pack it in tallow, or turn it into pemmican. Forget the nutritional fo-pahs about consuming too much salt or fat, in a survival mode, you're likely to need more of both anyways, assuming you have a fresh water source to work with.


That's a pretty big assumption. In an urban or suburban environment like mine, food will be far more common than (uncontaminated) water in a major disaster. In a non-major disaster, you won't have to worry about food or water once you're past the response time of the local authorities.

In most of the scenarios that I've thought through, water will be the greater challenge. Plus, water is critical. You can go without food for quite a while, but dehydration kills much faster.

If you have a decent, reliable, continuous supply of fresh water, if you can count on it being uncontaminated in a survival situation (ie when everyone else affected starts using the water as well, not all intelligently), then sure. For me, and I suspect most of us here, water is the bigger issue.

Your body uses water to digest food. Metabolizing protein takes water, too. Salt dehydrates. For my part, I'd rather just keep more water in my kit. If it's a home kit, then sure, but then I'd use prepackaged foods that have a water content of their own. I like jerky, and I eat it on the trail, but it's not what I'd call a survival food.

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