The Pace of Nature

Well, I guess I should qualify the title of this post a little. Beef jerky IS the easiest DIY project IF you have the right equipment. Without the right equipment, it could possibly be the second easiest.

Anyway, recently, in preparation for an upcoming move, I was organizing my stuff in the garage. In doing so I came across my dehydrator and its accessories, and so decided to whip up a batch of my quick and easy home made beef jerky. Just like maw used to make.

It's what's for dinner...

I start with a pound of ground beef. Ordinarily I will only buy the highest quality (aka lowest fat content) ground beef available, which is typically 93/7 ratio. However, for beef jerky, I ditch the healthy kick and go for the cheap stuff. This is somewhere around 85/15 or so. I have made jerky out of every kind of ground meat imaginable (except ostrich), and I have found beef to be the best by far, especially with higher fat contents.

Once I thaw the meat, I mix it up with the curing salt first, and then some seasoning. You can use specialized salt, or sea salt to cure the meat. There are loads of free guides that will give you the proper ratios and measurements for it all. I choose the easy way these days, so I buy the pre-packaged salt/seasoning, as seen below.

The easy way

This is available at both Wal-Mart and Target, and a whole host of other stores. NESCO is really the brand you’ll see the most often if you get into dehydrating much. They are a good brand, and pretty inexpensive. I use their four-stack dehydrator, and their jerky gun as well.

Once I mix in the ingredients for about five minutes, I am ready to start forming my jerky. With ground beef you have to form the jerky into something that will dry easily and be easily eaten. You can either make the “slim jim” style of jerky, or the flat style of jerky. If you have a jerky maker, like I do, this is as easy as stuffing the meat into the gun and pointing the nozzle. I make mine about four to six inches long each. If you don’t have such a contraption, you will have to try to roll it by hand, which is a pain, but is not impossible.

The meat gun.

Alternatives to this are to use flank steak or other cuts of meat that is thin enough to pull into strips and dry. You don’t want to have thick chunks of meat, however, because that will cause you to dry the meat for several days. Getting the right level of moisture left in the meat is a delicate process. This is why ground beef is so easy. Six to eight hours will give you the same consistency every time.

So, however you choose to form your meat, the next step is to put it on the dehydrating trays, like you see above. Take care not to put the meat too close to each other as you have to create enough room for the air flow to be effective. This limits my trays to about eight strips per tray or so. I am able to fit the whole pound of beef on four trays perfectly.

Beef jerky

For a pound of ground beef I leave the dehydrator on between six and eight hours, depending on where I am drying, and what the humidity is like. I usually use the garage, and I usually start it as I am going to sleep around 10:00pm, and get it at 6:00am. You can do less, but with less time you’ll approach a consistency where the beef will fall apart. If you leave it on for much more than eight hours, it will be very tough and will crumble when you eat it. The consistency should be soft enough to bend the jerky somewhat, but hard enough that you have to bite through it.

Mmmmmm... Jerky

When you first take it off the dehydrator it will have a lot of grease on it. I usually lay out a long paper towel, and lay all the strips on it. I then cover the strips with another paper towel and let as much of the grease get soaked up as I can. I then bag it quickly to preserve its dehydrated state, and enjoy with some friends, or add to my camping stash of food.

Finished and ready to eat

One pound makes about two sandwich bags full of jerky.

In preparation for springtime, and for the fact that I am about to move to a state nicknamed “Vacationland”, I have been updating my outdoor supplies. Last year I decided to scrap my internal frame backpack, along with about 30 other items, at a yard sale. This was mostly because hiking around where I live is either one of two things: a walk on a sidewalk through the woods, or a walk through a brier-filled swamp. So, I figured I’d make some money (and some room in my garage) and lighten my inventory somewhat.

Now that I am about to go back to an area where hiking and camping is actually possible, I am super excited. In preparation, I bought a new rucksack. I decided to go with the external frame this time around for a multitude of reasons. If you are familiar with hiking at all, you have probably read about the internal/external frame debate ad nauseum already, so I will abstain from arguing one way or the other. (Personally, I find the external frame far superior in terms of comfort, weight distribution, functionality, and versatility.)

The pack I bought is amazing, but it didn’t come with a rain cover. Some might argue the necessity of a rain cover for their pack, citing that a tent or tarp would do just fine. The only trouble with that is that you cannot very easily pull out your tent or tarp and cover your gear while continuing to hike in the rain. For this you need a rain cover that can quickly fit over your gear and allow you to continue on the hike despite the foul weather.

Eager to get back into homemade fabricating again, I decided to sew one myself rather than buy one.

If you would like to try this, you will need the following:

• Fabric (preferably ripstop nylon)- Measure for at least 1 foot clearance on all sides of your pack
• Bungee cord- Measure the circumference of your pack, and make the bungee just a bit smaller
• Sewing machine and basic sewing skills
• A lot of patience, and some Tylenol for the aching joints you’ll have when you are done

Pack on top of pre-cut nylon

The first step was to cut my nylon to the size I wanted. I used a pretty thick 440 ripstop nylon with a waterproof coating on one side as the fabric of choice. I cannot remember where I bought it, but I have TONS of it left over from my homemade hammock and other projects I tackled several years ago. For the bungee I used 1/16″ bungee, which I also bought years ago and have TONS of. I measured out the bungee cord (which you can barely see lying around my pack in the picture) to be just smaller than the frame. The idea is that the bungee will have to stretch just a bit to fit over the frame, and thereby provide enough tension to keep the fabric covering the pack. The fabric has to be a decent size larger than the pack to allow for size differences in gear loads, and also for extra items that might be hanging off the frame (like an iso mat, tent, etc). Once I measured and was comfortable with the size, I cut the piece, rounding the corners to make it easier for the bungee to keep its oblong shape.

The next step was to iron the creases, which I prefer to do over pinning. If you pin the creases, you have to stop every few feet to remove the pins as you sew, and it also takes longer. I used the lowest setting on the iron, and ironed two creases. The first crease was about half a centimeter from the edge, which becomes just the folded under part to prevent unraveling later. The second crease is actually where I intend to sew the sleeve to fit the bungee.

With that done, I started sewing. Unfortunately, I was too focused on this task to remember to take a picture during the act, so instead I flubbed and took a picture after the fact. (Picture added for dramatic effect)

Yeah, I sew... so what?

The next step is the long, laborious task of threading the bungee into the sleeve that you just sewed. Trying to sew the bungee in the fabric is impossible and will only result in broken needles. You have to sew the sleeve, then thread the bungee through. Trust me, I have tried.

To thread the bungee through you can either inch it along unaided, or you can poke a safety pin through it and thread the safety pin through first. Sometimes the safety pin makes it easier to thread. This project I decided to do it by hand. It took me most of a National Geographic special called “America’s Deadly Dozen” to finish the task. About an hour. Not too bad.

Simple straight stitch. Nothing fancy

Once I was finished I simply pulled both ends of the bungee through until they were even, making sure to even out the fabric as well. Then I pulled both ends through a simple cord lock and tied a figure eight on the end to keep it put.

The final product weighs about an ounce and a half, and folds up to about an envelope-sized bundle. It is large enough to cover the pack plus any additional gear I might have hanging off of it, but can be tightened down very easily to cover just the pack.

View from the back

It’s not very difficult or technical, but total cost was probably close to maybe $2.00 and took me about two hours total to complete. For me, that’s worth it every day, all day long.

View from the front

Now I have a nice and simple rain cover for my brand new pack that I can throw into a tiny pocket and have available any time I encounter bad weather. If you give this a try, drop me a line and let me know how it came out!