Wow thank you all for the great replies! That helps tremendously as those are excellent points and good links.

Jonathan - thanks for the link I knew I’d seen it somewhere on the site but just couldn’t find it. I would eat raw steaks with you but would throw them on a fire for two seconds each side to get the grill marks. I like grill marks…

Kyle - thanks man yeah you guys have been awesome

Dave - I will have to check out those videos. Biltong is a thing I’ve been wanting to work on for awhile now. We have a bunch of South African dudes here working for the grain elevators and big farms. I need to get lessons from them while they’re here.

Process head - you’re spot on with the vacuum sealing. I didn’t think about mold and all that great point and it would make it convenient to put in an emergency kit like for a car or take hiking or hunting.

Bocephus - thanks I’m sure glad I finally joined

Departing contestant -. I think you’re right about doing only dry seasonings and long smoke or dry times. you make an excellent point about back in the day. How did they do it and what did they know or do that maybe we don’t know nowadays. There is a lot to be learned from old timers

Welcome. You’ll get a lot of good info here.

If you want to reference someone as you just did. Try this.
Use the @ symbol. If the name doesn’t pop up your looking for, start typing the name and you’ll get some hits.

Good luck, and thanks for being here.

Jonathan - thanks for the link I knew I’d seen it somewhere on the site but just couldn’t find it. I would eat raw steaks with you but would throw them on a fire for two seconds each side to get the grill marks. I like grill marks…

Kyle - thanks man yeah you guys have been awesome

Dave - I will have to check out those videos. Biltong is a thing I’ve been wanting to work on for awhile now. We have a bunch of South African dudes here working for the grain elevators and big farms. I need to get lessons from them while they’re here.

Process head - you’re spot on with the vacuum sealing. I didn’t think about mold and all that great point and it would make it convenient to put in an emergency kit like for a car or take hiking or hunting.

Bocephus - thanks I’m sure glad I finally joined

Departing contestant -. I think you’re right about doing only dry seasonings and long smoke or dry times. you make an excellent point about back in the day. How did they do it and what did they know or do that maybe we don’t know nowadays. There is a lot to be learned from old timers

But yeah, if you salt and dry it will last.

If you want to know all the correct times, temps, heat before dry, etc stuff for making jerky, then paste this into your google and download the USFDA jerky guide:
FSIS Compliance Guideline for Meat and
Poultry Jerky Produced by Small and
Very Small Establishments
2014 Compliance Guideline

Your process should get you to a safe point as the water activity on it would be so low that nothing is going to grow on it if you have also added salt and sure cure (which you will have done). Another option would be to add some sugar, which will bind with the water and make it unavailable for microbial growth but still keep some tenderness to the meat.

HOWEVER, if we are talking true zombie apocalypse I am eating raw steaks every night and going out on a kill streak of at least 100!

edit* it may have already been in the cure conversion chart as well, I went to add it and either did it really quick or it was already done.

Sure Cure (Pink)45604900091/4 tsp (.04 oz)1 1/4 tsp (.2 oz)
https://meatgistics.waltons.com/topic/617/seasoning-conversion-chart-for-1-lb-and-5-lb-meat-batches/2