This last Monday was a day off of work for me. I spent some of Sunday night looking for green peppers in my house, possible pre-diced and frozen and just waiting at the bottom of my freezer. I did not find any peppers. What I did find, however, was a box of Steak-Ums (pre-packaged cheese steak meat) which had been opened and dropped in there sometime in the last several years. The meat itself did not look freezer burned, but I knew I hadn't bought any in years, and this box was open. Rather than just toss it, I thought I would try to salvage it by turning it into jerky.
My dad had built a home dehydrator out of (I am not kidding) plywood, chicken wire, and lightbulbs, and made venison jerky with the first deer of the season every year. He would portion it out into seven baggies: two for each of the 3 kids and one for him and my mom. We'd get our first bag immediately and the second bag at Christmas. And my dad's jerky recipe was delicious. The meat always marinated overnight, so that's what I did with this.
I took the pack of steak-ums, put them in a pyrex bowl, marinated them in what was left of a jar of Kraft Honey Barbeque sauce (good stuff, honestly, and I had a third of a jar in my fridge) overnight on Sunday. Then, on Monday, slow-cooked them on cookie cooling racks over top of baking sheets (so the BBQ wouldn't just drip into the oven.) I had to do an internet search to find out how long and what temp, and all the websites suggested that I slice a roast "into 1/2 inch thick strips" or "into 1/4 inch thick strips". Steak-ums are much thinner than that, and the idea with jerky is to slowly dry out the meat. The websites I found suggested an oven temp of 200 degrees for anywhere from 4 to 8 hours. I lowered the oven temp to 175 (as low as mine would go) and left the meat in for 3 hours before "peeking", flipped it (it should have dried evenly but I was just being cautious) and then, because it didn't seem "done" (it was still "floppy") upped the oven temp to 200 and gave it another 2 hours.
Well, it was absolutely horrible. Literally. Horrible. I would not recommend this to anybody. I am still not sure if it was because I was starting from years-old meat, if it's because the meat was too thin, if I had the oven temp too low for the first 3 hours, or what. But it was nas-tay. As I said, an experiment is not a failure if I have learned something. And the only materials lost were a third-bottle of sauce and the meat (not even a whole pack) which I would have thrown out anyway.
If I wanted to know what went wrong here scientifically, I would have to isolate each factor, and repeat this experiment several times. But since I don't want to waste actually edible steak-ums that I would have to buy with real money just to satisfy my scientfic curiosity, I think I'm just going to go with: this was bad, and my dad's is good. Therefore, IF I ever make homemade jerky again, I will start from an actual, proper cut of meat, and use my dad's marinade recipe.
Minus ten points from Gryffendor
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