....of the jerky making coming up today. The house smells like it just burned. lol Ma ain't what I'd call a happy gal.
I fired the smoker up yesterday morning and did six grills of cut muscle jerky. This was smoked up using a cool fire and apple and hickory woods. After six hours it got shifted to cake pans and slipped into the oven at 180 degrees where it got turned every couple hours and when dried to where I wanted it the pieces would come out and put in another pan to cool.
While the cut jerky was smoking, I made the pressed jerky. I got five screens of it rolled out and sliced. These were in the oven at 180 degrees the whole while the cut stuff was in the smoker. Timing was perfect. The pressed jerky got a couple liberal paintings of liquid smoke on each side during the process.
This morning I am cutting the pressed stuff into snack sized pieces and then vacuum sealed. The cut jerky will get sealed in smaller packages just for me. Everyone [1 daughter and several grandkids] likes this pressed stuff. I don't mind it but I like the real smoke and thicker slices of the cut jerky much better. Less work too. I am stuck having to make both. At any rate, the end is near....as in today. I have two more screens of pressed meat to dry, then the sealing gets underway. I think I'll get seven bags of the pressed jerky [ each screen yields about a pound] and I should get about 15 bags of a pound each of the cut product.
Between the ring bologna, the summer sausage, the snack sticks and now the jerky, I think I have enough goodies to get me thru this miserable winter season or at least the football season and super bowl. Now I can start with the antlers. I cut an oak plaque the other day. All I need do there is run the ogee cutter around the edge and sand it. Then I'll mix up my 2 part acrylic, stir it into the sawdust to make a paste, and form away. The hardened form will get sanded to the shape I want then 1/8" closed cell foam gets laid as a base and either red or blue velvet is stretched and glued down over the foam. 1/4" bolts have their heads buried in the sawdust/acylic paste and when the covering is dried the holes get marked in the plaque and drilled. A quick stain and varnish job and the antlers gets bolted to the plaque. Finito! Hard to imagine one deer causing so much work, eh?
