I haven't tried this, but it looks interesting.

When I was in high school, I ran across a beef jerky recipe somewhere and tried it out. It involved seasoning the beef strips, pounding them a bit, dipping them in boiling water for about 15 seconds (if I remember right) and hanging them to dry in the open air for several days. The jerky was fantastic - so much better than the woody stuff that you buy in stores.

I went off to college in Southern California and got the urge for beef jerky. I got some beef and did the prep stuff on my desk. But, there was no stove or pots in the dorm. Ah! One of my roommates (there were four of us to a room) had an electic coffee pot, though. So, I boiled water in that and dipped the meat in his coffee pot. Then, I strung the strips on coat hangers I'd taken apart and hung them from the ceiling of my dorm room. My roomies thought this was proof that anyone from Washington lived a backwoods life. But, when they tried it, the stuff was devoured in no time.

LOL apparently either no one knows what I'm talking about, or there's too many vegetarians present. I was hoping for some feedback on this specific method I figured some tribe AB fan must have done it. I'm going to try it, I guess. The meat is NOT cooked. It's marinated, sliced, then forcefully air dried. That's it. No heat. Supposedly the texture is so much "meatier" and tender than the leathery commercial stuff or what you get doing the dehydrator or low oven methods.

If you haven't the slightest idea what I'm talking about, here the details:

GE ep #EA901: "Urban Preservation II: The Jerky"

www.foodnetwork.com/food/rec...1,00.html

The reviews there seem positive, as do a couple other sites when you Google it. It's AB, I know it will work. Just looking for opinions. :)

Yeah, I made some a couple months ago. It worked great, but you should let your fan run for at least 24 hours, 48 would be better.

Made it this weekend. Worked out well. I used 3.5 lbs of flank steak and it fit on 2 20"x20" filters I got at Home Depot for $2.20 each. The stuff is a bit spicy, but that's how I like it. All in all it was about $30 for about 1.5 lbs of finished product (not including the fan which I already had).

That comes out to about $5 per 1/4 pound which isn't too bad. It took about 10 hrs to dry but I left it overnight just to be sure.

All in all, it was actually pretty easy.