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Written by Robert Tanner, asap
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Monday, 14 May 2007 |
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When will jerky finally get its due?
The chic restaurants and cookbooks are all about Italy’s delicate prosciutto, Spain’s pata negra (a cured ham from a pig with black feet), French duck confit. Respect runs deep for the wonders of American bacon, and other homegrown delicacies like Louisiana’s andouille and boudin sausages.
But the simplest, most basic of cured meats doesn’t ever seem to get any respect from the high priests of the cooking world.
Take a drive around the country and you’ll see how deep and broad is the love for jerky. Stop at any convenience store, fish-and-tackle shop or all-night gas station from Texas to Oregon to Maine to Florida, and right next to the cigarettes and steamed hot dogs will be a display of jerky.
I may not set things right all on my own. But it’s time I took my own leap into the glories of jerky. I was going to make my own.
To prepare, I stopped first with a West Virginia coworker, whose deer-hunting husband provides a steady supply of venison jerky. She not only was generous enough to give me a bag to save for emergency reporting assignments (it didn’t last a month of snacking in front of the TV) but also e-mailed me the recipe adapted from her Uncle Jim (I will not venture a guess whether his nickname is Slim).
It built on a base of soy sauce, steak sauce, black and hot peppers, and garlic. Also Liquid Smoke.
Then another colleague, whose love for China and all foods Chinese (as well as jerky), encouraged me to throw in Sichuan (the Mandarin Chinese way of spelling Szechwan) pepper rather than tamer black peppers like Tellicherry or Malabar. He had one rule and two suggestions — get the leanest, unfattiest meat you can find; and consider a dehydrator and a rump roast.
Then I did a little Web searching, where I found a claim that the word jerky comes from the Spanish “charquis” for dried meat, which they supposedly picked up from native Americans. I have no idea if that is true. One site warned about illnesses from poorly handled jerky, from drying too slow and too low so bacteria flourished.
That was a bit sobering. But this wasn’t sushi. This was the original do-it-yourself approach to preserving food, a basic human survival technique. Heat, smoke, salt. I wasn’t going to be scared off so easily.
So, the meat: Flank steak and top round. I let them sit in the freezer for about an hour to easily slice thinly. Then came the all-important overnight marinade.
I tried to follow Uncle Jim’s lead, but I am constitutionally unable to follow a recipe without temptation luring me off the page. Some things I just didn’t have and couldn’t justify adding to my already crowded shelves for just one dish. Garlic powder? A-1? Liquid Smoke?
I smashed a few garlic cloves and threw them in with soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce. Tabasco instead of cayenne pepper, along with a few shakes of the addictive Southeast Asian hot sauce Sriracha. I added a dash of Maine maple syrup for a bit of smoky sweetness, and somehow a cardamom pod got in there.
Then, just before bed, I dried the strips off and laid them on thin open racks raised above cookie sheets. Then, an obstacle: My electric oven wouldn’t go below 170 degrees, nowhere near the 140-160 recommended. Luckily, the last page of the oven manual explained how I could recalibrate the oven myself if it cooked too hot or too cold, so I was able to make it think 155 degrees was 170, and I was off.
Four hours later (I set the alarm for 3 so I could check), they were done.
Half-asleep in the pitch black and far from hungry, I still had to taste. Briny salt with a lot of pepper heat, just a touch of sweet (I couldn’t tell where the soy began and the maple came in), a few bright notes of salt and a hint of cardamom all floating on a rich sea of beefiness. And it took a good half-minute to chew, so you had time to think about the flavors.
I’m not claiming perfection. Most slices were too thin, so while I like leathery, these went too far. More coarse ground pepper would’ve been nice. Half the slices (the top round) had a vein of fat that was unappetizing and, the books said, would shorten the shelf life.
But that wasn’t going to be a problem.
At work, where I thought there were maybe one or two jerky aficionados, it became clear I was surrounded by secret jerky lovers. I must’ve offered it to a dozen people, and all but one jumped at the chance.
Now my mind is reeling. Pork jerky, veal jerky, fish jerky. May the experiments begin.
Then again, jerky is something that makes every gas station fill-up a moment of discovery. And I’ve got a road trip next weekend...
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asap columnist Robert Tanner has eaten his way around the world as a national writer for The Associated Press. Hear him introduce himself here: http://tinyurl.com/29zxud
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