Preserving Meat the Old Fashioned Way

Wifezilla

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"I know how to dry meat because I have dried lots of meat myself... Before my time they never used salt, but in my time, what we did was make a rack, sometimes two, even for one moose... Lots of times I would take the whole hind-quarter, cut the bone out, and then cut it fine (thin) and make it (the sheet of meat) as big as I can. You can, you know, make one sheet out of one hindquarter, if you watch it pretty close. It was very seldom I could do that. Lots of times I would cut it in two. Then I would cover the whole rack with that, laying it over (like a blanket). Before I did that I put salt on it on both sides.

Then you made a little smoky fire. In the heat and the sun, it dried very fast. It is better you know, if you cut it very thin than when you cut it thick. With the smoke and the salt, it can be well cured, and it is very good.

Then lots of times we would put that meat on a raw hide on the ground and pound it to make pemmican out of it...

We never threw anything of the moose away, hardly. We even ate the eyes - the head and everything. We used to boil that too... it made good headcheese. We even took the hoofs and cleaned the meat out. Then the bones, we took and boiled them and took the grease. That was really good lard. All of the bones we broke and boiled them in a big pail and made - in Cree we call it [Cree word unintelligible on tape] bone grease in English."

http://www.calverley.ca/Part01-FirstNations/01-046.html
 

Wifezilla

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"Most USDA publications and home economists discourage drying as a means of preserving meat. While canning and freezing is the safest means of preserving meat, drying has been done successfully for centuries.

This is another controversy that you will have to decide for yourself.

Jerky is the most common type of dried meat. Nearly any type of meat can be made into jerky as long as it is parasite-free. Meat which has been frozen, then thaws (as in a power outage), can be made into jerky.

Begin by trimming off any fat or connective tissue. Remove the bone. Cut into strips one-half inch thick or less. You can parboil at this time if you wish, but it is not necessary.

The next step is to soak the meat in a seasoned brine. There are many different recipes for this brine or marinade. The easiest brine is one pound of pickling salt in one gallon water. Some folks prefer a more seasoned brine of spices, Worcestershire sauce, sugar, etc. Experiment to find your favorite. Soak the meat in the brine for 24 hours, then rinse and dry. You can also rub the seasoning in by hand, then wait a few hours and dry. Keep meat cool while it is absorbing the seasoning.

Meat is dried like fruit and vegetables. Hang the strips on racks or drape over sticks in an area with good air flow that receives full sunlight. A fire can be built nearby to give the meat a smoked taste and speed drying time if you wish.

Protect from insects with cheese cloth or other such fabric. A recycled accordian type clothes dryer works wonderfully for a drying rack. Since it is mobile, it can be moved close to the fire or brought inside at night so the meat can finish drying. It can also be cleaned with hot soapy water after use.

Meat is ready for storage when it is completely dry. It should be somewhat flexible but brittle enough to break when it is bent in half. Store like dried fruit or vegetables.

Jerky can be eaten as is or re-hydrated by simmering in broth or water. It can be added to soups, stews, etc. "
http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/shaffer58.html
 

dacjohns

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You can also make machacha. It is basically roast that has been cooked, then shredded with the fat removed, then dried.
 

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This is a subject that I want more info on- thanks. I never hear of machacha but will look it up.
I was reading about hamburger gravel where hamburger is cooked then as much fat is removed as possible then dried.

When I finally get that oft whined about wood stove, I could save the meat that in the freezer in case of a long term power outage.
The longest I've been through here has been 2 weeks.
 

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I can't keep jerky here............. teenage boys! :( I'd like to try it outdoors over a wood fire one time but when the deer is killed, its usually not all that sunny and warm out. Freezing it to thaw out later doesn't seem to work, as we usually need to eat all we have. This year I canned it and this seems to slow down the teen hogs a little.
 

patandchickens

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There are various Asian methods of preserving pork, similar to described above, where you cook the living heck out of the pork and it ends up as dry separated shreds, 'fluff', that can supposedly be stored for a few months in an airtight jar. I made it once some years ago, but et it all within a week so can't really speak to its actual storage qualities :p

Pat
 

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Pat- recipe please.
I spent about an hour on the web finding machaca is a term used for a lot of different things- none of which said anything about how to dry. Eventually I was led to carne seca which is a form of Mexican jerky.
But since I prefer Asian foods anyway, that sounds like something I really could use.
 

patandchickens

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Here is what I could find in a quick cruise thru my few remaining cookbooks (I decided a few yrs ago I had too darn many and whittled it down to about a dozen and a half :p).

I *think* the first of the two is probably the one I made years ago in grad school, but it could have been from elsewhere. Mostly I remember it being a big time sink :p

Pork Fluff (from Everything You Want To Know About Chinese Cooking, by Pearl Kong Chen, Tien Chi Cheng, and Rose Tseng)

1.5 lbs lean pork loin
1/4 c light (not lite) soy sauce
2 Tbsps dry sherry
1.5 Tbsps granulated sugar
2 slices ginger
4 c water
3 Tbsp oil

Trim fat from pork and cut into 1 inch chunks, put in 3 qt saucepan, add all other ingredients *except* oil. Bring to boil, turn to medium-low and cover pan. Cook 2+ hrs, til very tender and sauce reduced to 1 cup.

Remove pork to cuttingboard while still hot. Pound with rolling pin, a little at a time, to break up the meat into fine shreds. Make sure it's finely and evenly shredded.

Strain the remaining sauce thru a fine seive into a nonstick skillet. Add the pork shreds and set on high heat. Cook, stirring constantly, til sauce is dried up.

Reduce heat to medium, tossing and turning constantly, for about 30 minutes.

Whirl in the oil and ontinue to toss and turn til the shreds are fluffy and crispy. When color changes to golden, remove from heat.

Store in glass jar when completely cool. The pork fluff can be kept for several weeks.



Dendeng (Indonesian dried spiced meat) (from The Complete Asian Cookbook, 1st ed, by Charmaine Solomon) (very good book, btw, so is revised edition)


2 kb round or topside steak
5 tbsp peanut oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 tsp finely grated ginger
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried shrimp paste (trasi)
1.5 tsps salt
1 tsp sambal oelek or chili paste
6 Tbsps dark soy sauce
2 Tbsps tamarind liquid
3 tsp palm sugar or substitute

Cut steak into 2" slices. Heat oil in large pan and fry the garlic, ginger, spices and shrimp paste for a minute or two, then add everything else *except* sugar. Add emat and fry, stirring, til meat is coated with spice mixture. Reduce heat, cover pan, and let cook over very low heat for 30-35 min, stirring occasionally. At the end of this time the liquid should be almost dry. Uncover, add sugar, and stirr to dissolve. Turn the meat in this mixture over medium heat til liquid has evaporated, but do not let it burn. Remove pan from heat and spread the meat in an oven dish in a single layer. Put into a 250 F oven for 30 minutes. Turn pieces of meat and continue cooking in oven for 20-30 more minutes. Meat should be very dark brown but not burnt, and the oil should come out from the meat and be visible at the edge of pan. Cool and store airtight. Can be kept for a long while without spoiling.

(note: I have not made this recipe but from experience with other INdonesian recipes I have to say that getting to the point of 'oil return', as the third-from-last sentence refers to, is really important in getting desired results. You have to kind of look for it and learn.)

I am sure there are a jillion other recipes along these general lines but as I say I downsized my pointless cookbook collection about 5 yrs ago so that's all I gots :)

Pat, now very hungry for indonesian food but having also gotten rid of most of the necessary ingredients :p
 

Wifezilla

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While I think Jerky and smoking is the tastiest way to preserve meat, this is another method someone told me about.

"Potted meat or meat potting began as a way to preserve meat prior to the advent of refrigeration. When people slaughtered their own animals, the amount of meat produced was usually much more than could be eaten before the meat began to rot. People evolved a number of methods for saving this extra meat for later, such as dry curing and smoking. Potting meat was another means of storing food, and that old tradition lives on today in several commercial brands.

Early potted meat usually involved the meat of one animal only, most commonly pork. Meat might be ground, or not, and then cooked. The fat was saved and poured onto and around the meat, usually in large jars, and the fat would help keep the meat from decomposition. Some cooks added spices to the meat, or made sausage patties from it, so the preserved meat had more flavor. As much meat as possible was pressed into the jars so that they formed a compressed, relatively soft end product, similar to pt."
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-potted-meat.htm

"Meat potting is preserving meat in it's own grease in a large crock pot. This is how we did it. Early in the morning Dad killed a pig and started cutting it up. He gave the pieces to Mom who had the wood stove in the kitchen hot and ready to cook. She started frying the pork and prepared the 10 gallon crock pot. This pot was about 18 inches in diameter and 24 inches deep. Mother washed it, and got it just as clean as she could get it. As the pork fried, it gave off lots of grease. She took some of this very hot grease and poured it into the bottom of the crock, sealing and sterilizing the bottom. Then she put the meat she had just finished cooking down onto this grease.

As she continued to cook throughout the day she added the well fried meat and covered it with the hot fat that came from the cooking process. By the evening the pig was all fried up and in the pot, covered over with a nice layer of lard that had hardened. As the days passed by, we dug down into the lard to where the meat was, pulled out what we needed, and put it in the frying pan. We cooked it a second time to kill any bacteria that could have possibly gotten into it. Doing this not only re-sterilized the meat for eating, but melted off all the excess fat. The meat was taken out of the pan and the fat was poured back into the pot to seal up the hole we had just made getting the meat out."
http://waltonfeed.com/old/old/pot.html
 
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