How to dry meat at home: simple methods

Dried (or jerky) meat is an excellent snack during outdoor trips, picnics and long trips. Such a product is not demanding on environmental conditions, is nutritious and high in calories. It is better not to buy already dried meat, but to make it yourself at home. How to properly dry meat at home? Let's figure it out.

Meat preparation

The piece must be washed well and cut into thin strips.

Be sure to clean it from pathogenic microorganisms. This can be done in two ways: either boil the meat in advance (not until fully cooked, but only to kill harmful bacteria), or treat it with table vinegar.

To ensure that the final product is as tasty and aromatic as possible, the meat strips can be marinated for a couple of hours. The traditional marinade contains the following ingredients:

100 ml soy sauce,
100 ml Worcestershire sweet and sour sauce,
1 head of garlic,
2 tbsp. l. granulated sugar,
1 tsp. salt (sea or table salt - your choice),
0.5 tsp. onion powder,
0.5 tsp. black pepper.
Some people add 2 tbsp to this marinade. l. tomato ketchup, but this ingredient is optional.

Only after pre-treatment can you proceed to drying the meat.

Smoking beef in the microwave

Many people use the microwave oven as a technique for heating food. But you can make delicious smoked meat in it, the recipe for which will later become your favorite. To prepare it you will need the following products:

beef tenderloin (1 kg);
mustard (3 tbsp);
liquid smoke (3 tbsp.);
spices to taste;
salt.

Having collected all the components together, begin the cooking process:

Separate the meat from the film and rinse under running water.
Rub the carcass thoroughly with seasonings and mustard. For a richer taste and aroma, let the meat soak in the refrigerator for up to 3-4 hours.
After the time has passed, take out a piece of beef, wrap it in a baking sleeve and make a few holes.

Microwave the tenderloin for 30-40 minutes. Set the mode yourself, since each equipment comes with different functions.

In the oven

The most common and simplest method is oven drying.

Cover the bottom of the baking sheet with coarse sea salt, lay out the strips (as many as will fit) and season them with salt again on top.
Place the meat pieces in an oven preheated to +70 °C.
Turn on the ventilation mode or open the door slightly.

Drying meat takes from 4 hours to a day, depending on the size of the strips, the amount of product and its condition (tough meat dries more slowly).

Dried meat in the fresh air.

In Africa, they simply rub the meat with spices and hang it outside. The hot sun and wind do their job in a couple of days.

The method is good, but not suitable for our housewives. Huge drying cabinets, where you can dry meat not in plates, but in larger pieces, are expensive. But if you use your ingenuity, you can make a drying cabinet from what you have at hand.

A plastic box, a computer cooler, and a grill, that’s all you need for a drying cabinet.

The drying method is the same as when drying meat in slices, but since this meat is not intended for long-term storage, it can be marinated in wine rather than vinegar. You can use poultry and not very fatty pork. Hang the pieces of meat on hooks or place them on a wire rack and turn on the fan.

Drying slices of meat in such a dryer will take about two days, but if you want to speed up the process, install a lamp in the dryer that will heat the air.

Without forced airflow, the meat needs about 10 days and constant ventilation, which is difficult to provide in an apartment. Although, nothing can stop a true meat lover.

There are many recipes for drying meat, and you can watch one of them in the video:
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In an electric dryer

An electric dryer will make delicious preparations from fresh meat in literally 10–15 hours (the time is affected by the quantity and condition of the product, and the power of the dryer).

Place the pieces prepared according to all the rules on drying trays.
Set the temperature to +70 … +80 °C.
Place the meat in an electric dryer until it is firm.

According to rough calculations, from 2 kg of raw meat you should get about 400 g of dried delicacy.

The most delicious recipes for cooking dried meat

Today there are quite a lot of different recipes for making dried meat at home.

Therefore, you can easily choose a cooking method to suit your taste. Next, let's look at the most popular options that are used most often.

Montenegrin prosciutto

This is the name given to home-cured ham.
To prepare, carefully remove all excess fat from the meat, wash it and dry it with a paper towel. Next, the raw material is rubbed with sea salt and sent to a fairly deep container. The ham should be marinated for several weeks. The brine should be poured out from time to time and the meat should be sprinkled with a new layer of salt. Next, the future delicacy is laid out on the grill with its open part and gently pressed down with a press. It should remain in this state for another couple of weeks. After this, the semi-finished product is thoroughly washed to remove salt, dried with a paper towel, and hung in a draft. The room temperature should be no higher than 16 degrees. The ham must be dried for at least 10 months. During this time, the delicacy will become lighter by about 30%.

Cooking Montenegrin prosciutto is a fairly long process that requires patience. But the result will please any gourmet.

Jamon

To prepare jamon at home, you need to take a five-kilogram pork ham and about 8-10 kilograms of sea salt. Next you should follow the instructions.

The meat is washed and dried and placed in a deep container.
A large amount of sea salt is sprinkled on all sides, which in this situation acts as a preservative. Therefore, it is worth making sure that the raw materials are evenly covered with a layer of salt on all sides.
The prepared ham must be placed in a dark and always cool room for at least five days. The room temperature should not be higher than 5 degrees, and the humidity level should not be less than 80%.
It is worth noting that for each kilogram of meat it will take about a day for it to be salted well enough.
Next, you need to remove the meat from the brine, wash it thoroughly and place it in the freezer. Jamon will ripen in the cold for two months.
After this period of time, the ham is removed from the freezer and hung upright in a room where there is good ventilation. He must remain in this position for at least 5 months. In this case, the temperature should not exceed 18 degrees.
Then the jamon should be kept for one and a half to two years in a dark and cold room.

It takes a lot of time to prepare the delicacy, so it costs quite a lot of delicacy to cook at one time. Or do it several months apart. The result is an incredibly tasty and tender delicacy that is impossible to resist.

Pork balyk with coriander and spices

The minimum number of components allows you to get a delicacy that will have an incredibly high cost in specialized stores. To prepare incredibly tasty dried balyk, you will need to prepare the following ingredients in advance:

1.2 kilograms of pork loin;
150 grams of coarse table salt;
Ground black pepper and red pepper are added to taste, ground red paprika and coriander.

This recipe is one of the simplest, so even a beginner can handle the preparation. An oblong piece of pork is thoroughly sprinkled with salt on all sides. It must cover every centimeter of raw material. Then the semi-finished product is sent into a deep container and pressed down with a weight, then sent to the refrigerator to marinate for three days. From time to time, the future delicacy must be turned over.

After this time, the fairly well-salted pork is blotted using napkins. Next, rub the piece of meat with the spice mixture evenly on all sides. The future delicacy is wrapped in a piece of clean cloth and tied quite tightly with twine. In this form, the workpiece is left in a well-ventilated area for a week. After this time, you can start tasting delicious homemade balyk.

Basturma

For a kilogram of meat, take 30 grams of nitrite salt, two heaped teaspoons of chopped garlic, and half a teaspoon of ground black pepper. The raw materials are thoroughly rubbed with the resulting mixture and placed in a bag. It is necessary to release all the air from it and tie it tightly. The semi-finished product is sent to the refrigerator for a week and turned over from time to time. Then it is taken out of the bag and washed thoroughly, sent to dry in a dark and dry room where the air temperature does not exceed 20 degrees.

Meat in vodka brine

In most cases, this recipe is used for drying beef at home. To do this, you should take 150 grams of vodka, 100 grams of salt and sugar, a teaspoon of peppercorns and a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil per kilogram of quality meat.

All fat present must be completely removed from the meat and washed thoroughly.

Next, all components are added to the container and mixed. The future delicacy is also laid out there. The brine should completely cover the entire piece of meat. Beef should be marinated in the refrigerator for three days. After this, the almost finished delicacy is blotted with a paper towel so that a little marinade remains and is left to dry a little for a while.

Biltong or African beef jerky

High-quality and fresh meat must be cut into thin strips, the thickness of which will not exceed 1 centimeter.
Additionally, they can be beaten a little, which will speed up the process of preparing biltong several times. To salt a kilogram of meat, you need to take 50 grams of salt, a tablespoon of coriander, and ground red pepper to taste. Some experts add a small amount of soda. The raw materials are sprinkled with 6% wine vinegar and then rubbed evenly on all sides with a mixture of salt and spices. Semi-finished products are laid out in a container that will not oxidize, as tightly as possible, pressed down with pressure and left for 12 hours in the refrigerator. After six hours, the meat must be turned over. Next, mix wine vinegar with water in a ratio of 1:6 and dip the future delicacy in it for five minutes. The strips of meat are wrung out and hung in a well-ventilated place. It will take literally a couple of days to dry.

Useful tips

To ensure that home-dried meat turns out really tasty, follow the simple recommendations below.

Try not to dry out the meat. Your goal is to remove moisture from it, not make it brittle.
You should not dry meat with layers of fat. During the drying process, the fat will become rancid and the final product will taste bitter.
Don't be afraid to over-salt the meat. It will absorb exactly as much salt as needed.
To give the sticks a dizzying aroma, you can season them with cumin or coriander before drying.
Before packing the meat into a container or jar for storage, expose it to air for a while. The sticks must cool completely so that condensation does not form in the container.

Now you know how to properly dry meat. It can be served with many different dishes, from rich soups to delicious sauces.

How to dry and cure meat

You can prepare real delicacies from salted meat. To do this, they just need to be salted in a special way, and then dried or wilted.

I'll tell you a secret, jerky can be made from regular corned beef. Perhaps this is how the Indians prepared their famous jerky. If you want to play Indians, do so. Of course, it will be difficult for you to get bison meat, but beef, lamb or goat meat will successfully correct the situation. To do this, cut the beef into long strips along with the fat, and first cut the carcasses of small livestock - sheep and goats - into two halves, then separate the shoulder blades and hams and cut them in several places so that the salt penetrates better into the meat. If you want to make jerky on the ribs, chop them in several places before salting. Rub the prepared pieces of meat with salt and place them in a tub, sprinkling them generously with salt. Then cover the meat with a circle with pressure, cover with a lid and place in a cool place. The meat should stand there for 15 days; after that, take it out, rinse thoroughly in cold water and hang it out to dry. During drying, periodically remove pieces of meat and place them under pressure for pressing. Once the meat is dry enough, store it in a cool, dry place. Under such conditions, dried meat is preserved for 6-8 months.

Dried beef or pork basturma

Prepare the pork or beef tenderloin and cut it into pieces if necessary. Then pour coarse salt onto the bottom of an enamel pan in a layer of 2-3 cm and place pieces of meat on it. Sprinkle the meat with a 3-5 cm layer of salt on top. Leave the meat for a day at room temperature, then keep it in a cool place for another 2 days. After 3 days, remove the meat from the resulting brine and wipe it with a clean napkin. Then start rubbing the meat with ground red pepper and do this for about 1 hour, rubbing the pepper as thoroughly as possible. After this, hang the meat in a cool, dry place.

Dried horse meat or beef

Cut the pulp of lean horse meat or beef into equal oblong pieces, place in a saucepan, cover with hot water and cook until tender. Then remove the meat from the pan and rub it hot with a mixture of salt and ground black pepper and ready-made mustard. After this, place the meat in a greased frying pan and place in a heated oven for a day or in an oven for 5-6 hours at a temperature of 110-120 ° C. Cool the finished dried meat and store it in a cool place. Serve it as a delicacy by cutting it into thin slices.

Pay attention to the labels

What about dried meat sold in stores? Nutritionists warn that we must keep in mind that it may contain additional preservatives. Beef can be pre-marinated in sauce. It is inevitable to add a considerable amount of salt to the meat, because these snacks are salty and often spicy.

There are many products that are sold in the form of cut dried ribbons, slices of meat. However, in reality they are often made from highly processed ground meat.

A standard 30-gram serving of dried beef contains 10-15 grams of protein, 1 gram of fat and 3 grams of carbohydrates. However, you should always read the labels. Such a product may contain preservatives, sugar, dextrose, and maltodextrin.

Dried meat products from other countries can be found on our shelves. So, in South Africa they came up with biltong - it is basically ostrich or beef, which is seasoned with salt, vinegar, sugar, pepper, and coriander before drying. In Spain, jamon serrano ham is very popular, which is made from a whole leg of a pig on the bone. This ham matures for a long time and, thanks to the drying process, acquires a unique taste, tenderness and aroma. During ripening and drying, it loses almost 50% of its original mass. In other words, dried meat sold in stores can be very different, which obliges us, consumers, to be careful when choosing it.