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Beef jerky...

Started by PZ, March 15, 2010, 10:25:20 AM

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PZ

... for fans of this delectable dried treat, I posted a method that has worked very well for me.  Always a hit with everyone that has ever tried it, the method is surprisingly easy, and the smoker (hot smoker) is versatile and can be used for many other foods.

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Art Blade

I thought smokers were kind of banned... at least in public places  ;D
[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

PZ

lol, they are - you're not allowed to smoke salmon in public!  ;D

(Imagine trying to roll one of those)  ;D

RedRaven

would need hands of a giant and filters the size of paint tubs :)
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Art Blade

I've never smoked salmon, of all things.  ;D
[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

PZ

You could start small and pack a Sherlock Holmes pipe for a taster  ;D

Art Blade

I might as well start hardcore and roll a salmon, using trout skin, and smoke the entire package in a single go  ;D
[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

mandru

The trouble with smoking salmon is keeping them lit and as for the draw, forget about it (I tried to imitate a NY Bronx accent with that but "Fugedaboudit" just didn't look right).

I grew up on the outskirts of Seattle and spent a lot of time in Asian fish markets admiring the varieties and colors of different species you usually wouldn't expect to encounter outside of imported tropical harvests but those times at the fish markets were for me like a trip to a museum.  I was fascinated and enjoyed those visits but food never entered my thoughts, not at least with the way fish markets smell.

The concept of fish as a nutrition and protein source as well as the fatty omega 3 benefits have always made a lot of sense to me but unfortunately I'm not a big fan of fish.  When fish hits my tongue my throat clamps down in a gag reflex and screams "Not past me you won't!"

I think part of my problem is that I'm a super taster. I have a higher than average number of taste buds not only located where you would expect to find them but also extending to the insides of my lips, down the roof of my mouth and well into my throat.

I think, when I look back at it, I embraced smoking as a way to knock down or at least mask my sense of smell and taste but I can still spot a carton of milk going bad 3 or 4 days ahead of my wife.  She has learned to trust my nose when we step into a strange restaurant we're visiting for the first time always asking if it's OK.

Now beef jerky on the other hand is a whole 'nother critter!  Reading about your recipe PZ and the rig you fix it up in got my mouth watering so bad I'm going to have to sneak out and take a late night walk down to the 24hr mini-mart on the corner and see if I can't find something that will pass for peppered jerky.

It's too bad I couldn't find a good hot link in the whole state of Utah if it would save my soul or I'd have me a run at one of those tonight also.  Darn! Now I have two cravings going.
- mandru
Gramma said "Never turn your back 'till you've cut their heads off"

Art Blade

nice read, mandru :) :-X

Very interesting, I never knew anyone could actually taste with something else but the tongue, sounds like nature had a funny day creating you ;D

However, I can relate to a very sensitive nose. Despite of the fact that I smoke, I can still detect the faintest smell. Two examples that always amused me:

A mate and I drove in his car for a good while when I couldn't hold back any longer and I asked him if he had stashed oranges somewhere, to which he said "no" with cocked eye-brows. A while later I told him that I still had the idea that there had to be something orange-ish in his car and asked if he minded me searching his ride, which was ok for him. After a while I found the heating outlet in his glove compartment, and I could barely reach into it with my fingers, but in there were pieces of dried orange peel, presumably from the previous owner of that car. My mate's eyeballs nearly popped out of their sockets when I presented my find.  ;D

In the office, I was under the impression that someone was eating something with strawberries in it, it smelled of them. To me the sensation was so intense that I started to wonder who it might be, and later on we found out that a colleague diagonally across the room (say, 20 yards or so) had opened a strawberry yoghurt. Of course there was some laughter with disbelieve, like "don't tell me you could smell that over there"  ;D
[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

fragger

Cool reads, guys :-X

mandru has taste buds lining his insides, Art has a nose like a bloodhound - with me, it's my ears. When I was 17 I joined the Air Force (which I ended up being back out of again in short order - nothing nefarious or suspect, but quite a long story which I won't bore you with here), and part of the medical examination was a hearing test. Each testee would sit in a soundproof booth wearing a pair of headphones, with his back to a glass window. The examiner would sit outside the window and watch while he sent musical tones through one channel or the other of the headphones, and we were told that "every time you hear something in your left or right ear, raise the corresponding hand for a second". As the tones were sent through, the examiner would gradually lower the volume until it became inaudible to the testee, at which point the examination would be over and we'd be rated. Mind you, you'd have to be as deaf as a post to fail the test.

Anyway, it took an average of 30 seconds for each cadet to be tested. Then my turn came. I sat down and put the headphones on, and a moment later I started hearing the tones. They got quieter and quieter until I couldn't hear them anymore - but I could still just hear the carrier wave frequency change whenever a tone was sent through, so I kept sticking my hand up. The examiner did tell us to do that after all, whenever we heard "something". After about a minute and a half of this, the booth door flew open, the examiner strode in huffily and demanded to know what sort of "trick" I was using. I told him what I'd been hearing, and he said that in his 20 years of testing cadets, he'd never struck anyone like me before.

Naturally, I was immediately nicknamed "Sonar" ;D

So, get us all together and there won't be anything we can't taste, smell or hear. All we need is a member with X-ray vision to round out our set of super-senses and we can hire ourselves out as threat-detection specialists ;D

PZ

ROFL  :-X

You guys are funny - for me, I thought of the proverbial monkeys - hear no evil, speak no evil, etc, except that I can't smell anything, can hardly see anything, and because I don't have a sense of smell, can't taste much either.

On an aside, in addition to the basic taste sensations (sweet, sour, salty, and bitter) a 5th type of taste bud was discovered, called Umami, it detects the flavor that makes beef taste good - the glutamate amino acid.  The reason it was only recently discovered is that is not on the tongue at all, but on the pharynx (throat).

Art Blade

Good story, fragger  ;D

I'm next to blind, but apart from my nose, I have quite good ears, too (still). I can hear the carrier signal of a TV set (I know it's on even if I can't see it) and just recently I had this funny moment: A colleague and I were walking down the stairs to the underground/subway when we both heard a train arrive, but the rail tracks couldn't be seen from where we were. She went "quick, our train is coming" when I said, "no, it's on the other side" (the tracks are like a road, two lanes, opposite directions). She looked at me baffled, "you can hear that?" - "yes." And indeed it was the "wrong" train arriving.  ;D

PZ, interesting about that 5th sense. Makes me wonder why it's so deep down... if the beef was off, it would mean you had to gag it up (yuck) to prevent it from getting into your stomach, while tongue senses will let you spit it out before it is halfways down the throat  ;D
[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

PZ

They're not actually that far down the pharynx - closer to the root of the tongue.  I guess the logic is that when you swallow the juice, you appreciate even more the good flavor (if you're a meat enthusiast)

Art Blade

Sounds like carnivores win over veggies (they haven't found #6 yet, have they, that makes you appreciate the taste of salad) ;D
[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

PZ

haha, you never know  ;D

Art Blade

I've just remembered another example of how useful a good nose is: I can smell if bread gets mouldy even before you can see it. Maybe two days before that. I can tell because bread (and cake, for that matter) starts to smell not yummy any more, then it loses it's smell, it smells of nothing before it turns green  :)
[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

mandru

Quote from: Art Blade on March 16, 2010, 09:18:39 PM
Sounds like carnivores win over veggies (they haven't found #6 yet, have they, that makes you appreciate the taste of salad) ;D

I once read a sci-fi author's opinion, though I can't remember who to attribute it to, that carnivores were definitely in our ancestry for the simple reason that higher brain function development is not required to sneak up on a carrot.
- mandru
Gramma said "Never turn your back 'till you've cut their heads off"

PZ

Quote from: mandru on March 19, 2010, 08:49:35 AM
I once read a sci-fi author's opinion, though I can't remember who to attribute it to, that carnivores were definitely in our ancestry for the simple reason that higher brain function development is not required to sneak up on a carrot.

That plus the fact that the eyes are directed forward in the skulls of predatory animals (carnivores) while they are directed toward the sides in prey animals (e.g., carrot eaters).  Depth perception is not possible unless you have two eyes converging on an object - the brain estimates the distance to the target by measuring the angle that the eyes are directed toward the midline.  ;)

Art Blade

I love that part: "to sneak up on a carrot" LOL Hilarious  :-X
[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

fragger

Quote from: mandru on March 19, 2010, 08:49:35 AM
I once read a sci-fi author's opinion, though I can't remember who to attribute it to, that carnivores were definitely in our ancestry for the simple reason that higher brain function development is not required to sneak up on a carrot.

LOL ;D ;D

That sounds like an "Asimovism" to me :)

nexor

Hi PZ, In South Africa we dry our beef differently and call it "Biltong", you pronounce it   bill__tong, like in tongs(another word for pliers) without the "s".
We just spice the meat then hang it out to dry for a few days.

mmosu

Quote from: Art Blade on March 16, 2010, 09:18:39 PM
Sounds like carnivores win over veggies (they haven't found #6 yet, have they, that makes you appreciate the taste of salad) ;D

There isn't a 6th "tastebud" per se, but there is a theory on why some people like veggies and some don't.  About a year ago I was sitting in a physiology lecture where some research was being presented that had looked at the diets of infant children and how that correlated with their subjective experience on tasting vegetable extracts later on in life.  Basically what they found was that infants who had been exposed to certain tastes early in life essentially had a partial "remapping" of their taste centers, which later on made some of the compounds commonly present in green, leafy vegetables taste sweet and flavorful to them.  Individuals who had not had these experiences tasted these same compounds as bitter and unpleasant.  So essentially there was long term potentiation of certain taste centers, brought about by early exposure, that caused life-long change in taste perception.  I'm not sure what practical application this research has except to tell us to make our kids eat their vegetables, but that's academia for you  ;) 
Oh, and BTW, welcome to the forums nexor63.

PZ

Quote from: nexor63 on March 24, 2010, 04:44:24 AM
Hi PZ, In South Africa we dry our beef differently and call it "Biltong", you pronounce it   bill__tong, like in tongs(another word for pliers) without the "s".
We just spice the meat then hang it out to dry for a few days.

Thanks for posting nexor63, I had no idea.  How do you keep the flies from infesting the meat?

Also, I see from your post that you actually live on the continent that one of our favorite games is based on - cheers!

@mmosu - remapping of the cerebral taste centers is a reasonable theory, but I'm not too sure about an actual anatomical taste bud.  I rather suspect that taste might follow the same physiological "rules" as olfaction - combinations of chemicals trigger specific responses (i.e., the taste bud is not as simple as it is thought to be).  Interesting research you mentioned, and logical in thought.  :-X

Art Blade

mmosu, that is interesting to me. I don't know if you have seen the docus that you can find in the topic: Science and History (media) -- there is a link to a docu that deals with something quite similar, but it is one step "ahead" if you like, because it basically describes scientifically how certain impacts to a living being will be inherited by its offspring. I used to describe it in my own non-scientific words like this: If I punched a guy in the face, his grandchildren would still have black eyes. The thing is, I wonder if someone was exposed to a certain taste during infanthood, would it not only affect himself but also be inheritable? :)

nexor63, you don't happen to speak Cape Dutch, do you? :) Would be awfully nice of you if you could help us by translating those merc lines in FC2 that no one here understands  :)
[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

nexor

Quote from: PZ on March 24, 2010, 10:34:42 AM
Quote from: nexor63 on March 24, 2010, 04:44:24 AM
Hi PZ, In South Africa we dry our beef differently and call it "Biltong", you pronounce it   bill__tong, like in tongs(another word for pliers) without the "s".
We just spice the meat then hang it out to dry for a few days.

Thanks for posting nexor63, I had no idea.  How do you keep the flies from infesting the meat?

Also, I see from your post that you actually live on the continent that one of our favorite games is based on - cheers!

@mmosu - remapping of the cerebral taste centers is a reasonable theory, but I'm not too sure about an actual anatomical taste bud.  I rather suspect that taste might follow the same physiological "rules" as olfaction - combinations of chemicals trigger specific responses (i.e., the taste bud is not as simple as it is thought to be).  Interesting research you mentioned, and logical in thought.  :-X
PZ, during winter time we have no flies around, during summer time one need to keep the flies away, some guys have a cabinet for drying the meat, basically just a cabinet made from timber and flyscreen, the main thing is, is to let as much air fentilate thru the cabinet, even a fan works well.

Hi Art, it will be a pleasure to help, the language they speak is Afrikaans, and also "Zulu", one of our major black languages is also used often in the game, will get one of my staff who speaks Zulu to translate for me. Untill the new government came into power here in 1994 Afrikaans and English were the only Official languages spoken in our schools,  Afrikaans, a West Germanic language descended from Dutch and spoken mainly in South Africa and Namibia by about 10 million people, originating from the Dutch spoken by settlers in Africa in the seventeenth century and thus is classified as Low Franconian.

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