My wife is at the edge of reducing her sodium, or having to start high blood pressure medication, so I am trying to pay attention to all the salt/ sodium I’m putting in food, using lemons and acid when I can to still keep flavor. I’m making a lot of food with less salt and letting family add it at plate, but that doesn’t work great meat products where you need the salt to modify proteins.

Now I’m wondering how folks felt the Mandarin and the Sweet teriyaki blends stacked up against the regular teriyaki, for folks that have made 2 or 3 of the versions. And will also have to search to see how much of the jerky seasoning they used in snack sticks to get the right salt in the more water sticks. I always forget just mixing a bit and cooking to taste it is good, but I will have to use a really accurate scale if I do that small amount.

I also went through and read the reviews of the seasoning you used and there were a few reports of over saltiness that they had. As well as kind of bland with not enough teriyaki flavor as well as others surprised of the amount of heat they were not expecting.

I hope you find a solution to have a better outcome, it’s rather disappointing throwing good meat and hard earned money in the trash. I’ve been there done that numerous times. Mostly my error but some seasoning issues as well.

It might be interesting to take some of the remaining seasoning and do a small split batch with half volume measurements and the other half by weight. That assumes he has the scale with the capability to measure the amounts needed. Even a reloading scale.

1. Either it is actually too salty, or taster is not aligned with standard taste bellcurve. 4 tasters all said too salty, therefore it is actually too salty.
   1a. Either used too much, or used correct amount and the ends up being too salty. Reviewed calculations, product upc, and correct amount was used. Therefore, recommended amount is incorrectly high in salt.
2. Standard salt acceptance is 1.5% to 3% salt vs. Meat… wet meat is used for that calc usually. Anything over 3% actual in finished product usually perceived as too salty.
3. This teriyaki usage rate is 3.8oz per 5 lbs, which is 4.75%. Looking at the ingredient list, it appears to be more salt than usual, salt is listed 4 times as included ingredient. Once as salt, twice in dehydrated soy sauce which will be mostly salt once water is gone, and once as hydrolyzed soy protein which is primarily salt again. It also has citric acid, which tends to emphasize salt flavors.
   Ingredients:Salt, Dehydrated Soy Sauce (Soy Sauce [Wheat, Soybeans, Salt], Maltodextrin, Salt), Hydrolyzed Soy Protein (Contains Salt, Caramel Color), Spices, Fructose, Garlic Powder, Citric Acid.
4. Of the 4.75% of this spice mix added, I’d bet 3.5% or more is salt. If you dehydrate your jerky to 50%, the final saltiness your tastebuds get is 7% to 9% salt vs meat, which is probably over 2 or 3 times what most people like. Jerky, unlike most other products, you can easily vary the perceived saltiness by 50% depending on how much you dry it.

I weigh out all my salt for recipes. Recently made a fairly dry canadian bacon at 82% final weight, so 18 % loss. It started at 2.8% salt, so ended at 3.4% salt, and that is about the max salt I would want in a dried meat. If it was 7% salt, I know I couldn’t eat it.

So, my suspicion is the starting recommendation recipe for this blend with 4 salt sources, is too much salt for a product you then concentrate dry.

If Walton’s would publish the sodium content of their spice mixes, we would know exactly how much salt/sodium we are using…

processhead spice wouldn’t t need to be adjusted, but if I’m not mistaken, you don’t need to hold ground meat overnight for the cure. I’ve done this before and had my ground jerky turn out very salty. Wondering if it might have been because of curing overnight.

Yes, agree on no adjustment in this case.
I only mentioned it because of Dave in AZ earlier comment and also Hi Mountain jerky seasoning does call for more seasoning in their ground jerky than in whole muscle when following their instructions, for reason I never understood.

Whole muscle. (Had to look up restructured muscle. Still not quite sure what that is)

Ground meat jerky

That was the only jerky seasoning I’ve tried from Waltons. I think I’ll try another and see if I get the same results.

I measure out in level cups, tablespoons, and teaspoons.

I probably should have mentioned, I rubbed down the meat with the seasoning, then put it in a zip lock with a cup of water. Then placed it in the fridge overnight.

I can’t seeing any of your subsequent processing steps having any effect on the saltiness.
I also did not see any adjustments to the spice quantity regardless of whether you do whole muscle or ground jerky. Note that some jerky seasonings do adjust the seasoning amount depending on whether ground or whole meat, but not this one.
Assuming that the amount of spice used is correct for the amount of meat, all that leaves is uneven application of the seasoning to the meat.

You should be able to tell this though, because some of the meat would taste under-seasoned and some would taste over-seasoned.

BTW, I just made a 5 pound batch of the Chorizo seasoned sausage. 0290000. And 5 pounds of the Blue Ribbon Brat seasoning. 0210360. Both turned out VERY good.

I probably should have mentioned, I rubbed down the meat with the seasoning, then put it in a zip lock with a cup of water. Then placed it in the fridge overnight.

If you actually bought the Mandarin Teriyaki seasoning, you used 2x too much.