Making Jerky

I love jerky.

If I go to the store and they have it, I’m probably going to buy some.

But the sad part is, that’s mostly what I get these days is store bought jerky and it’s a far cry away from making it yourself.

Years ago, I made a batch of homemade jerky. My father-in-Law was an avid hunter and he gave us deer meat from one his hunts. A small problem was we didn’t have that much freezer space, but that’s an easy problem to fix. Since we’d already had a couple of good freezes and there were no bugs in the San Luis valley now, I went into the old garage and put up several lines using good strong twine.

I then began slicing up the meat into strips about six inches long and wide, and no more than a quarter inch thick.

I wanted to make two kinds of Jerky and that demanded two different bowls.

The first batch was simple. Put the sliced meat in the bowl, sprinkle it with some soy sauce, add another layer, more soy sauce, and well, you get the idea.

The second patch was a little different. I got a bowl and mixed in a little salt, a little more pepper and garlic powder, and then hatch red chili. I mixed it together and then I took a piece of the meat and placed it in the bowl, and then flipped it over. The spices would cling to the meat, and that piece of meat would join dozens of other pieces of meat on a tray.

I put both heaping bowls in the fridge and let them soak up the spice overnight.

The next day, Julie and I took it out to the garage and began draping it over the lines with maybe a quarter inch space between the each piece of meat. And the heavily loaded lines ran from side to side, front to back in the garage. There was a lot of meat hanging up, and it wad dripping soy sauce and small amounts of blood onto the floor.

“Nothing can get in here and eat it?” Julie asked. “There are cats around.”

“If they can climb up that high,” I said, “they deserve to poach a piece of meat.”

I was pretty sure that the cats wouldn’t like chili or soy sauce if they got any anyway.

Finished, I locked the garage and waited for the fall weather and God to finish the process.

The following day, I walked by the garage and I could smell the chili and the soy sauce drying into the meat. The smell brought a smile to my face because it took me back to my childhood and to the small “casitas” a lot of the older folks had in the valley. These were small structures, usually detached from the main house and they were often used for additional living space. But in the case of my grandparents, it was used as storage for beans, potatoes, onions, and to dry spices in. And in the fall, it was used to make jerky and the aroma of the spices lingered for months afterwards.

A couple of days after hanging the meat, I checked on it. It was drying nicely, and as expected I’d seen a little line shrinkage. But it still had a little ways to go before it was finished.

My son and daughter met me outside.

“Dad? Is it ready?” they asked.

“Not yet,” I said, locking the door. “And don’t get in there and eat any. You’ll get worms.”

The following day I checked again. It was almost done. I frowned looking at it. I’d expected a little shrinkage as the meat dried, but there was several inches between the pieces of meat. In some case, the pieces of meat were separated by up to eight inches. Talk about shrinkage. I scratched my head looking at the lines of meat. Something wasn’t right.

I walked back to the house. My son and daughter were sitting at the kitchen table when I came in.

“Have you guys eaten anything off the lines?” I asked.

“No,” they both answered.

“What’s going on?” Julie asked.

“There seems to be a lot less meat than I started with.”

“That cat has been hanging around,” my son said.

“To get meat hung up that high, that has to be one seriously athletic cat,” I said. “Assuming, it could get in there to begin with.”

My daughter and son exchanged guilty glances.

“What?”

“We’ve been getting in and eating it,” my daughter said.

“What?”

“And we rearranged the meat so it wouldn’t look like it was missing.”

I started laughing and then said, “You guys ate over half of what I hung up!”

All they could do was smile.

And oh, they didn’t get worms.