The Outdoor Cook, Gary House shows how to make homemade Hawaiian Jerky - Smoke Vault style. Also, for you hunters out there, check out his Venison Jerky recipe at the bottom.
Jerky, in my house is a comfort food. I try to keep some available for those quick snacks my boys are always requesting. Originally I made my jerky in a dehydrator in the house, as I have shared before, not a favorable experience to Mrs Outdoor Cook. My new smoker of choice has been the Camp Chef Smoke Vault, a perfect choice for large quantities of beef jerky, smoked to perfection.
The 18″ Camp Chef Smoke Vault gives me plenty of rack space to add my jerky, plus adds the extra dimension of smoke that a normal dehydrator will not have. Temperature control is a snap, just set it to low and forget about it, a constant 200 degrees for as many hours as needed. If you want the temp lower, just open the vents or crack the door open a bit to adjust.
I like to add smoking chips to my jerky recipe for the first hour, adds great flavor and coloring (dark mahogany). Fruit woods are a good choice but stronger woods such as hickory and mesquite can be used also, just limit the exposure time so you do not overwhelm the flavor of the jerky your making.
These recipes are from my “100 Classic Jerky Recipes” cookbook.
A couple of additional tips I can offer:
- Place meat in the freezer for a hour to make slicing easier.
- Generally speaking, the leaner the meat, the better is your jerky. Remove all visible fat.
- For old fashioned jerky, cut strips along the grain.
- Keep your jerky strips as uniform in size as possible for even drying.
- Flank steak, skirt steak and London broil, are all good meat cuts for making jerky.
Hawaiian Jerky recipe
- 1 pound lean meat, thinly sliced
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp ground ginger
- 1 tbs brown sugar
- 1/4 tsp pepper
- 1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
- 1 clove crushed garlic
- 1/4 c pineapple juice
- 1/4 c soy sauce
- 1 can crushed pineapple – optional
- Cherry smoking chips
Combine all ingredients except meat in a 1 gal zip bag, mix well. Add meat, coating all pieces. Seal zip bag, removing as much air as possible. Refrigerate 6 – 12 hours.
Camp Chef Smoke vault set to low, add chips and smoke for 3 hours. You can use light or dark soy sauce for this jerky recipe. I used dark soy sauce.
