Venison Jerky

We've been thinking about this recipe for quite a while, so it was nice when it finally came up in the recipe rotation. The first step was to find some venison; fortunately, there's a Wild Fork not too far out of the way on our drive home from the temple. It's not inexpensive, but it is very good quality.

The next step is to make the marinade - basically a gallon of water with a fair amount of salt and brown sugar and smidgens of a bunch of other seasonings. No oil or vinegar, which we thought was strange, but it did turn out okay. While it's boiling for 15 minutes, cut the meat into jerky-sized pieces. (The recipe said this was enough marinade for 10 pounds. We could have cut it down, since we only used 2 pounds of venison, but that wouldn't be "following the recipe.")

Wait for the marinade to cool (you don't necessarily want to cook the venison yet), then soak the meat for one hour. Drain and place on a rack. You can use the oven set at 170 degrees, or the Dutch oven, with 12 briquettes on top and 4 underneath. Then cook for 6 hours, replacing the briquettes as needed, if going that route.

The finished product! The ones cooked in the oven look more like we expect jerky to look and are firmer, probably because the temperature of the Dutch oven varied as the coals lost their heat. However, both were equally good, with surprisingly delicious flavor. We did not give the marinade enough credit!

We stuck the leftover marinade in the refrigerator. In a few weeks we'll pull it out and try this recipe again using beef.