Don't tell anybody ( It's a secret.) but ground beef jerky is really raw pemmican. The only difference is you don't render the fat so it wont keep as long because the fat will go rancid but that's ok because pemmican is made with cooked fat while ground beef jerky is a totally raw food!
It's a good thing I started right out making 3 pounds because I'm already down to 2 pounds and it's nowhere near dried. To be honest I don't know if it's going to dry at all because of the high 27% fat content of the hamburger I used. I like fat but to be honest it's even a little rich for me. I will keep making it that way till I use up all the fatty hamburger in my freezer but next time the leaner stuff goes on sale I intend to buy a ton of it.
I set my dehydrator for 110 degrees F. before I went to bed and when I checked it with the infrared thermometer this morning it was a steady 102 degrees from the top to the bottom tray so I turned it down and intend on finishing the drying at the lowest 104 degree setting.
My recipe was pretty simple. I defrosted the beef and mixed in salt, pepper, cayenne, oregano, cilantro, lots of cumin and a few glugs of vinegar and mixed it with my hands and pressed it out to make really small thin patties.
Some of the beef was still frozen. Rather than wait I sliced it in my food processor. It came out paper thin and I just sprinkled salt and pepper on the slices after I laid them out on my dehydrator trays.
The part I mixed everything in with my hands like the video I posted tastes a lot better. The paper thin slices are drying a bit faster but actually they have re moistened a bit because I moved them to the top and are picking up moisture from the lower ones. There's only a few left so they'll most likely be eaten long before they get a chance to dry.
