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I make turkey jerky for money. You pay me, I send you homemade food, in spicy and/or mild and savory flavors. It's popular enough. Some of you may have even eaten it before. I know some of you are repeat customers. Today I wanted to document my process for the audience splaying along at home.
As always, I have my two faithful assistants watching me from the dining room. I'm not allowwed to touch food without their approval, you know.
This turkey breast was defrosted so it was still ice cold and just the tiniest bit still frozen. This allows us to cut it thinner easier.
This is what I got after de-boning and removing the skin and fat. Turkeys are very lean so it was like 99% meat and 1% other. As you can see my chopping block is a piece of shit and soaked through with turkey juice, but it's the biggest one we have, so ehhhh. This part is probably the longest part of the process, making sure I get everything I can off of it.
Cut down further into jerky sized strips/chunks. You can cut it but turkey also shreds when you pull it very easily, even fully thawed, so I just held it down with my knife and tore. Remember to keep your hands clean when handling raw meat. Especially before you make the marinade.
Garlic? Garlic. Also, cleavers make it hell of easy to smack garlic open to peel them ultra fast.
Basic marinade ingredients. I put this in both the mild and hot batches. The ziploc contains home-grown basil! Also warning you will smell like liquid smoke for days on end, you might want to wash whatever clothes you had on after. It takes a while to wash out of your skin, too, but at least it's a delicious, manly smell.
I use more savory seasonings in the mild batch. The base marinade is good enough for a mild batch, but I like to make it its own beast, special in a way the spicy one cannot be. It's unfair to those that can't handle spice if I just handed them plain food. This provides a very mellow, smooth, savory flavor, almost a bit sweet.
Let's talk spicy. I am fucking sick of stores advertising their food as hot when even extra spicy it does not register on my tongue. I know this is a common lament, too. So I guarantee you when you order it hot, it is actually hot. How can I tell when it's good enough? I taste it and when I start sweating, coughing, and sneezing, then yeah, it's good. Congrats, you now have a recipe for a chemical weapon. I'm still sneezing now writing this post. Damn fucking good. Sweat is good for you, don'tcha know?
Mild batch all nice and soaked up. It even has a nice, mild, even color to it.
Meanwhile, you can see the nuclear red glow off the hot batch. I highly suggest thoroughly washing your hands a few times after you're all done, not just to get any raw meat remnants off of you, but you will be sorry if you shove a finger in your eye or nose or on any private bits after handling the hot marinade.
Shove that shit in the fridge for 24 hours to soak in. Pirate hat optional, but it helps.
As always, I have my two faithful assistants watching me from the dining room. I'm not allowwed to touch food without their approval, you know.
This turkey breast was defrosted so it was still ice cold and just the tiniest bit still frozen. This allows us to cut it thinner easier.
This is what I got after de-boning and removing the skin and fat. Turkeys are very lean so it was like 99% meat and 1% other. As you can see my chopping block is a piece of shit and soaked through with turkey juice, but it's the biggest one we have, so ehhhh. This part is probably the longest part of the process, making sure I get everything I can off of it.
Cut down further into jerky sized strips/chunks. You can cut it but turkey also shreds when you pull it very easily, even fully thawed, so I just held it down with my knife and tore. Remember to keep your hands clean when handling raw meat. Especially before you make the marinade.
Garlic? Garlic. Also, cleavers make it hell of easy to smack garlic open to peel them ultra fast.
Basic marinade ingredients. I put this in both the mild and hot batches. The ziploc contains home-grown basil! Also warning you will smell like liquid smoke for days on end, you might want to wash whatever clothes you had on after. It takes a while to wash out of your skin, too, but at least it's a delicious, manly smell.
I use more savory seasonings in the mild batch. The base marinade is good enough for a mild batch, but I like to make it its own beast, special in a way the spicy one cannot be. It's unfair to those that can't handle spice if I just handed them plain food. This provides a very mellow, smooth, savory flavor, almost a bit sweet.
Let's talk spicy. I am fucking sick of stores advertising their food as hot when even extra spicy it does not register on my tongue. I know this is a common lament, too. So I guarantee you when you order it hot, it is actually hot. How can I tell when it's good enough? I taste it and when I start sweating, coughing, and sneezing, then yeah, it's good. Congrats, you now have a recipe for a chemical weapon. I'm still sneezing now writing this post. Damn fucking good. Sweat is good for you, don'tcha know?
Mild batch all nice and soaked up. It even has a nice, mild, even color to it.
Meanwhile, you can see the nuclear red glow off the hot batch. I highly suggest thoroughly washing your hands a few times after you're all done, not just to get any raw meat remnants off of you, but you will be sorry if you shove a finger in your eye or nose or on any private bits after handling the hot marinade.
Shove that shit in the fridge for 24 hours to soak in. Pirate hat optional, but it helps.
