Jonathon

PapaSop I’m sure that went by pretty quick. The sleepless nights don’t seem too long ago for us either. It’s very cool watching them grow up together.

mattboccabella I’ve always made jerky on my Traeger so the lowest temp I steadily run is 180 degrees. With both ground and whole jerky, it seems like you can flip/rotate the screens during the cook cycle to keep as uniform as possible. I’ve always pulled based on color/texture. You’ll start to see color change and be consistent throughout each piece. I’m making a batch a ground beef jerky for a friend later today and will try to take a few pictures.

mattboccabella With the batch I made this weekend, I took Jonathon 's advice and folded over a piece of jerky and took temperature readings to determine doneness. I pulled at 160 and they came out perfect.

I’ve never had luck running my Traeger on the smoke setting. It always wanted to burn itself out and throw a LER code. I did recently upgrade to a unit with supersmoke and the new D2 controller. It seems to run much better @165. I ran at this temp for the first couple hours of the smoke. Pictures are below.

mattboccabella

MCURRAN

Jonathon Thanks for the reply! I’m thinking this is going to replace my bandera offset that I’ve been using. Managing the temperate vertically in that unit is tough. In my last batch, I had 15 degree differences from the top of the stick to the bottom. They turned out okay, some really good, but some overcooked. I like the smoke flavor from the offset, but I’ll sacrifice that for a more uniform product out of the PK100.

I agree. I like to make as much whole muscle jerky as possible but with 3 yr old twin boys, I don’t like handing them a piece of that. I’m sure they’d chew it up, but I feel better with a ground meat piece. They can clean up a quart bag pretty quick. I’m with you both on the hi mountain. I’ve made that a time or two myself.

I’ve seen that the team at Walton’s has noted on some jerky seasonings (Bloody Mary for example), that it works well with ground/formed jerky. I’m curious how maybe a willie’s snack stick would be for ground jerky? Any house favorites from Walton’s?

MCURRAN

MCURRAN

PapaSop three of those are the walton’s jerky racks just stacked on each other. There is limited space between the trays with those. The other three are from Cabela’s I believe. The have folding legs on the outside and leave a bit more room in between the trays.

bocephus I really like it. I’m not sure if it really cuts down in processing time but it does shave a little cost compared to snack sticks. These were made with just the 25lb pack of seasoning, the correct amount of cure, pork fat, and a little bit of water (I think I added 2/3cup). Cooked in the pellet smoker until 160 degrees. I used the folding technique to measure temp. I did wipe some grease from all sticks a couple times during the cook when I flipped them over and rotated trays.

I’ll be making Mandarin Teriyaki formed jerky using the Walton’s Snack stick seasoning blend and will post those results when I’m done.