American Appetizer
BEEF JERKY
INGREDIENTS
1 pound flank steak, London broil or round steak
¼ teaspoon chili powder
½ teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon onion powder
½ teaspoon pepper (Freshly ground is best)
¾ teaspoon liquid smoke
6 tablespoons soy sauce
5 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons brown sugar
Serves 4. Takes 13-to-20 hours.
SPECIAL UTENSILS
wire rack
baking sheet
PREPARATION
Slice beef across the grain into strips ¼” thick. Add all other ingredients to large mixing bowl. Mix ingredients with whisk until well blended and brown sugar dissolves completely. Add beef strips to bowl. Mix by hand until strips are well coated. Cover bowl or put in large, sealable plastic, bag. Place in refrigerator for 8-to-12 hours. Stir at least once.
Preheat oven to 160 degrees. Remove meat from marinade and pat dry with paper towels. Put wire rack on top of baking sheet. Place marinated strips on top of wire rack. Do not let strips touch each other. Bake at 160 degrees for 5-to-7 hours or until strips are ready. Strips will be ready when jerky is dry enough to easily tear off a piece, yet will not snap when bent. Preserve jerky strips from air and humidity by storing them in mason jars or sealable plastic bags.
TIDBITS
1) Origami flourished in Texas during the dark, final months of the Confederacy. The Union blockade ships had deprived the state of all sorts of fun things: fine linen, playing cards, refrigerators*, baseball bats, anything that reeked of fun. All they had left was paper. Which was used for spitwads and even sent to the front lines, where they proved utterly useless in thwarting the bluecoat advance. Soon however, the thriving art colony of Tyler, Texas experimented with making animals out of paper. The Texas Art of Origami was born. Drovers, far from sources of paper, turned to making thin strips of cooked beef for their origami material. And so, beef jerky was born.
2) *Culinary historians are at a loss to explain these apparent artifacts in the Texas of 1865.
Chef Paul
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