BHM Home page<\/a>, just below my blog.<\/p>\nI’m just doing baby steps, so far. We were given a small panel, then my son, Bill, gave me another. In the spring, we’ll add to those and start saving more money than we are now by having the panels help charge our battery bank, along with the generator. I’m sure you can benefit from adding solar to your farm! — Jackie<\/p>\n
Making jerky from frozen meat
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\nI just wanted to write and tell you how impressed I am with what you do. I am nowhere near doing any homesteading myself (working\/studying\/in the city) YET, but do have plans for the future,
\nand you are a great inspiration. I am very keen on doing some canning of meat, but so far have been totally unsuccessful in finding a pressure canner here (South Africa), so am scheming to convince friends abroad to send me one (pricey!). If successful, I intend to do something similar to the French foods, like confit of duck and pork. Do you have any recipes in that line? I would like to make it so that it is ready to heat and eat, without any further preparation.<\/p>\n
I got a small dehydrator for Christmas, so have been having lots of fun with it, especially now (mid-summer) that my tomatoes, herbs and chillies from my small garden are ripening. I’d like to try to make some biltong (our version of jerky, but slightly different, mostly in thickness, I believe) in it, but am not too sure how to go about it, as I would like to try to make chicken biltong (partner cannot eat beef), and am a bit concerned about it going off before drying sufficiently, as it is very hot here at the
\nmoment. Have you ever made chicken jerky? (we get it here sometimes) Ostrich might also be an option (he can eat that in small amounts, as well as any venison, but not the right season now). Also, can I make jerky from frozen meat? (venison).<\/p>\n
Once again, you re a great inspiration, thank you for your very interesting articles. I look forward to reading the next installment (read your entire blog today). Also, good luck with the romance!<\/p>\n
Karen van Niekerk
\nAfrican Heritage Research Institute
\nCape Town, South Africa
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\nThanks for the kind words. No, I don’t have the French recipes you asked about; maybe a reader out there does? Basically you can home can just about any recipe you make, provided that you use the processing method and time required for the ingredient in it that has the highest requirements, in most cases, meat.
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\nYou can make jerky out of any kind of meat, but it is safest to either refrigerate, freeze or can it after it has been made to keep it from molding. Today’s jerky isn’t as hard, i.e. dry as the "old days" stuff. And with it being moister, it also can mold without further care. Old style jerky was as hard as a stick and took quite a bit of chewing to eat.
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\nYou can definitely make jerky out of frozen meat of any kind, as well. This does not affect the safety or taste of the end product. One hint: partly frozen meat slices so much nicer than does thawed or raw meat because of the ice crystals still in the meat. That’s a definite plus when cutting the meat for jerky.
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\nIf you are worried about your jerky spoiling because it’s only partially finished dehydrating, just take it out and place it in a covered, airtight dish in the fridge, then take it out when you want to resume drying and lay it out in your dehydrator. This works fine. Good luck! — Jackie<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Okay I’ll admit I got a little giddy because my liver function tests were hugely improved and I won’t have to have surgery! But really, it’s just time to start the garden. Kind of. Today I got out my cardboard box full of different pepper seeds and sorted out the ones that I just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,11,13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5107"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/JackieClay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}