Has anyone made jerkey on their kettle + SnS? I'm planning to try making some jerkey this week, and was just going to use the electric oven at 170F with the door cracked slightly, but have been wondering if anyone has ever gotten their kettle to run at the 140F that the jerkey article at https://amazingribs.com/tested-recip...erk-beef-jerky recommends. I know during STARTUP of the SnS I cross through the 140 to 170 degree range, but I have never tried to keep it that low... The other thought I had was a snake arrangement of charcoal, but with less than the 2x2 snake I used to use before I got the SnS.
Haha Attjack, guess its on me to do this research! On the plus side, I found the SnS facebook group, and people there say they have maintained 170-180 all day to make jerkey. Just night require almost closing the bottom vent entirely. That is the approach I am going to take.
I admit to stalking and not replying, I wish I could help! Never made jerky, only used my SNS 3 times. My previous experiences smoking were on my 22" kettle using 2X2 snakes. Typically what I saw was that if I was under 200F I was choking it out completely (top and bottom vents were open the tiniest sliver to maintain temps that low). My initial "guess" is that maybe with a snake half that size you could allow just enough O2 in to not choke it out, but it also wouldn't have enough fuel to get all that hot. Cool project though, curious what you find!
Hey Guys, for uncooked food products that bring a food safety risk, Meathead would like the conversations in The Pit to remain inline with the recommendations on the main site, and that is to keep all conversations with respect to smoking jerky above 180 with 200 as my preferred minimum.
Hey Guys, for uncooked food products that bring a food safety risk, Meathead would like the conversations in The Pit to remain inline with the recommendations on the main site, and that is to keep all conversations with respect to smoking jerky above 180 with 200 as my preferred minimum.
Thanks, JB
I plan to follow his advice of cooking at 180 to 200 for the first hour, then see if I could lower it, per Meathead's advice in that article I linked to. All he says after the first hour is that you should get it as close to 140 as your grill/smoker/oven would go, but that it would be hard to get that low on a grill. If I cannot get below 180 to 200 without snuffing the fire out, that will have to be close enough. I'll let everyone know what happens.
Per the instructions on the main site:
4) Drying. The final step is dehydration. You can stop smoking and cooking and dry the meat to jerky consistency. That means dark, almost black, but not carbonized, pliable but breakable, but not so brittle that it shatters. Drop the cooker's air temp to no lower than 140°F and hold it there.
Well, as an update, I fired up 10 KBB briquets on the Performer in a chimney over the propane starter, then dumped those in the SnS, no water, and added more KBB to fill the SnS, and scattered a handful of apple wood chips across the top (I'm out of fruit wood chunks, and did not want to use oak). It got up to 200 at the grate according to the Smoke before I realized it and choked down the fire, so I damped it down to almost closed on both top and bottom, and put my jerky meat on the grate. Things started dropping to about 150, so I opened up to 1/4 on both dampers, and the fire has stabilized around 185, and has been hanging there the past hour.
I'm going to just barely nudge ONE of the dampers and see if I can keep it around 180 or 170 without snuffing things out.
One thing - 1 pound of meat cut up into approximately 1/4" thick slices filled the grate that is not over the SnS. Since I had not cleaned the charcoal grate, I could not put any down there (plus it might be too cool down there) so I have another pound that will just have to sit in the spice solution until tomorrow or tonight. Next time I might steal one of my wifes racks from the kitchen to add a second layer, but she won't like her oven/pan racks getting blackened with smoke....
On this Whole-30 diet you cannot use soy or sugar, so basically I ended up making a different jerky recipe, leaving out anything sweet, and used a couple of tablespoons of kosher salt and a cup of water in the solution, along with lots of spices. We will see how it turns out. If its good, I am probably going to cure it for real next time with the addition of some Prague Powder #1, which I ordered this morning off Amazon. It's amazing how a little of that Prague powder goes a LONG way too, in reading up on it.
As an update, I am sorta ping ponging between 160 and 170 at the grate level. I let the meat ride for 185 for over an hour before I started messing with it. The bottom damper is 1/4 open, top opened about 1/8 - I cannot shut it much more than that due to the probe wire going through. A nudge one way or the other and I get a gradual increase or decline in temp, but it takes almost an hour to climb from 160 to 170, or to drop the other way. Good enough. Bet I can get more than 8 hours of time out of the SnS at these temps.
6 hours in, smoker has crept back to 180, at same vent settings. I opened it, turned all the meat over, and wife and I had a taste test. A few thicker pieces need a bit longer, the thinner ones are complete dried out, going from a dark red towards black. Tasted very much like I expected beef jerky to taste, which is a good thing! I'll take a couple of pics to post here before I take it all off the grate in a while.
Ok, Just opened for another taste test at 7 hours, and snapped a pic of some that I have yet to eat. Definite shrinkage, which you expect, as the grate seems a lot less covered than when I started.
This is a lot of time for 1 pound of meat, but also a learning experience. Next time I will put a raised rack of some sort over the main grate to double the amount I am doing. I would never be able to keep a temp as low as 170 to 180 in my offset like this unfortunately.
Hi, my name is Darrell. I'm an OTR truck driver for over 25 years. During my off time I love doing backyard cooks. I have a 48" Lang Deluxe smoker, Rec-Tec pellet smoker,1 Weber Genesis 330, 1 Weber Performer (blue), 2 Weber kettles (1 black and 1 Copper), 1 26" Weber kettle, a WSM, 8 Maverick Redi Chek thermometers, a PartyQ, 2 SnS, Grill Grates, Cast Iron grates, 1 ThermoPop (orange) and 2 ThermoPens (pink and orange) and planning on adding more cooking accessories. Now I have an Anova sous vide, the Dragon blower and 2 Chef alarms from Thermoworks.
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