Smoked Beef Jerky: Secrets of Smoking Method, Flavor and Science from 2 Professional PitMasters.

[Music]hey guys it’s Brian I’m coming at youfrom smokehouse Bayou internationalheadquarters here at Ocean Springs it’searly in the morning it’s about 6:20 Ineed another cup of coffee but hey whatI want you to do is we’re going to shoota video today about how we make smoke usby UB turkey our online orders have haveexploded we’ve shipped jerky to all 50states and our YouTube channels growingand look we just like sharing how we dothings with you and when you get thatbag of smoke house by you you’ll knowexactly how it was made and I thinkthat’s special to people you know itgives them insight into the the itemthat they’re enjoying into this case thebeef jerky they’re enjoying so anywaystay tuned I’m gonna grab a cup ofcoffee we’ll be right back and we’regonna smoke some jerky tonight and havea good time[Music]cast iron[Music]smoked cast-iron hi guys when you’remaking world-class beef jerky it comesdown to a few things your marinade yourmeat and your smoking method ordehydration method or whatever bookwe’re smoking jerky here at smokehouseBayou and so look I’m going to go overone of our basic marinades that we useon our smoked jerky I’ll give you theingredients obviously there on the bagof our jerky as well I’m not gonna getinto our exact recipe but I can tell youthisyou know cayenne pepper garlic powderand brown sugar kind of make the worldgo round in the south because you’ve gotthat balance of sweet and heat and heywe just like garlic down here okay soanyway those are three staples of ouringredients also salt and sugar and Iwant to teach you something about jerkybacon okay I was at a USDA facility inOhio this is probably about two yearsago and the guy that owned the facilityhe asked me he said what’s the wateractivity in your jerky and I’ll explainwhat that means okay water activity isif you think about it when we’redehydrating the meat or we’re smokingthe meat to make the meat shelf stablewhere it is actually considered jerkyokay you have to reduce the wateractivity to a specific level and I’llget into all those numbers or whatever Iguess I will in this story just a littlebit but you’re reducing the wateractivity which is part of the process ofmaking itself stable and making itactually jerky so the guy says to mesays what is your water activity in yourjerky and I said 0.68 and he laughed andsaid you mean 0.86 which means hethought it had a higher water contentand I said not according to MississippiState and then he cement there’s no waythat you’re whatactivities that low and your jerky isthat tender and so he had a machinethere where they can actually grind thejerky up and do a quick test and testthe water activity and on his machineand came back to point six nine which isreally close to what I had told him andhe was just blown away so this is themost tender jerky I’ve ever had and Ican’t believe the water activities somuch lower in my jerky in other words itwasn’t just shelf-stable it was tablestable that jerky you could just set iton the table for 30 days and then stillbe good okay so the ability to get yourwater activity very low and still havetender turkey is hinging on a couple ofthings and we’re going it’s might bejerky 101 but we probably gonna get alittle jerky 201 or 301 in this but whenyou when you smoke the jerky if you wanttender jerky we go with a thicker cutmeat okay you’re gonna you’re gonna cutit about a quarter inch or a littlethicker to begin with and then also youneed to use enough salts or salt andsugars be it brown sugar or just regularwhite sugar cane sugar what happensthere is when you use that in yourmarinades it or in your seasonings itcompetes for the water it draws thewater out of the meat okay and so youdon’t have to make super tough crispyyou know some people like that kind ofjerk you know I’m not knocking it butyou don’t have to make that super crispythin jerky that’s really hard afterthree pieces your mouth I always say myjaw steps are soreyou know from eating that jerky to getthe low water content or activity soit’ll be shelf-stable you don’t have todo that you can go with a thicker cut ofmeat but you’re gonna need to use enoughsalt and sugars in your marinade forthat to happen okay we do that here weuse enough I always tell people you knowyou might have a great marinade or agreat seasoning but don’t be scared ofdon’t be scared to use enough of it okayand so that’s very important anyway I’mgonna go over the basis of our or one ofour marinades here and you can try thisat home you can check the differentamounts just to make it to your tasteokay so you’re tasting I know indifferent parts of the country they’rejust not used to the flavor explosionthat we have down here in the south andthere’s a lot of times it’s like wowthis is so flavorful and that’s what wewant to do with our jerky it doesn’ttake any talent for me to just make sucha spicy jerky that you can’t eat itright but when you try our jerky I wantyou to be able to taste all thedifferent ingredients in it and I thinkthat’s one thing that is acharacteristic of world-class jerky youenjoy it more so anyway I have seveningredients that we use in the in thejerky marinade or in this particularjerky marinade and they’re very verybasic I told you we started out withgarlic powder that’s what I have hereand obviously I’m making enough marinadeto do I think you’d probably marinateabout 72 pounds of meat okay because ourmarinade mixture is four pounds of meatto every 1 pound of marinade now lookdon’t get caught up on the word marinadea lot of times people say well that’s aliquid you’re exactly right I just havealways missed it there called itmarinade even though it’s all you knowit’s not liquids that we’re using butwhat what you’ll find later in the videoyou’ll see that as we as the meat istumbling into the end of the seasoningit all becomes a liquid anyway and soI’m just always referred to it asmanually so if you want to leave acomment correct to me that’s okay it’sno big deal you know it’s kind of likewhen you know you’re doing somethingwrong but you keep doing it anyway areyou saying something wrong look yougotta put you got to use enough salt andsowe put a good amount salt in therealright this is gonna be this isactually about seven pounds of brownsugar I’m just gonna dump that straightin there a little bit of black pepperonly good about balance of that in thereso you can think about that an ounce ofblack pepper and enough to marinate 72pounds of meat that’s not a whole lot ofblack pepper a little bit of cayenne Isaid to garlic the Cayenne and the andthe brown sugar make a good balance butlook I think it’s the Scoville units orwhatever and peppers is how they measurepeppers the swing on cayenne pepper islike twenty-two thousand to forty fourthousand anywhere in there is acceptableor whatever and so you can imaginethat’s quite a swing so if you if you’remaking if you make some marinade or someseasoning and you’ve got it on the lowerend twenty twenty five thousandscovilles or twenty to twenty-fivethousand Scovilleand then the next batch you get is 44there’s really no way of knowing untilyou use it but you can tell it sometimesthat’s why there’s a variation in the inthe spice level I guess when you’reusing cayenne we’re gonna use some sugarnow obviously got all these measurementsand then we use memorized because we’vedone thousands of smokes with it andthen the last thing I’m going to use andI’m so pretty that sneeze or whatever isour cure in salt okay and on this amountof marinade to do this much meatI’ve only only used about three ouncesof this it doesn’t need any more but heyif you’re a jerky maker out there youwant to learn about jerky we talkedabout the water content or the wateractivity of them in the meat that’s onepart of shelf stability the second wouldbe the type of bag that you bag yourjerky in okay the third would be anoxygen absorber that you put in that bagthat would reduce the oxygen like wateroxygen or not your friends when you’retrying to make shelf-stable meat okayand then the fourth thing would be acuring salt or some sort of preservativeor whatever okay a lot of jerky say theydon’t use that build simple bar thoughthey will use a celery powder orsomething instead of that we use thisexcuse me we use this pink curing saltand it works very well for us and it’ssomething you can find online or you canalso find it at Academy Sports I mean webuy a lot of it from Academy becauseit’s right here local so those thingshelp your jerk this is what I tell youthose four things right there will helpyour jerky from growing a beard youdon’t want to look in a bag and see abeard on your jerky okay and if you dothose four things right your jerky won’tgrow a beard in that important machineevery month we don’t like our jerk youdon’t wear no fancy jerky yeah we’ve hadclean face jerky for years we don’t holdtheir beards on our jerkyou know just remember that all right sowe’ve got our marinade mixed up now I’mjust going to hand mix it and then we’regoing to throw it on time roll and lethim tumbling for a little bitthen the next step is getting the meatright and getting these two together sostay tuned all right we got the marinadeoff of the timer on the tumbler so it’sall mixed up well right now and ready tobe put with this meat but look when wefirst started you know just like youhome we hand sliced all of our I brownedthat’s the cut that we use we handsliced all of that to make the jerkythen we moved on to a crank slicer andI’m going to put a car to appear on thisvideo that has another video that showsthat device and something we picked upat Academy Sports it’s a game winner Ithink is the name of the product andbasically you just drop the meat throughthere crank the thing and it createssome great jerky slices for you which itwould man we sliced thousands of poundsthrough those things and it worked verywell I think it was $99 best ninedollars we spend a long time and we gotthat then we went to a big commercialslicer that you know a big ten thousanddollar slicer that we would cut all theraw jerky or roundup to make jerky meatthen we’d have to tear that thing downcompletelyclean it to the eighth degree so wecould use it when it came off the smokerto cut the the cooked side of or thecooked meat you know in that tearingdown processing cleaning process you’llsee that slicer in a bit you know it wasjust a big long drawn-out thingand so finally in searchin around wefound a meat supplier a USDA suppliergreater Omaha and basically we purchasedour meat already sliced is crosscutcreates a very good product for us we’resuper happy to have it is quite a bitmore of a per pound to get that laboralready done for you but man itdrastically reduces the amount of timewe have to slice and then just the majorcleanup that comesthat and so when we started getting themedian already sliced that saved mecomplete afternoons of time so I’m veryvery happy that we’ve made that changeand Michelle is gonna come and show youkind of how the process works with howthe meat comes in and what we do fromthere so check this out that’s not aknife hey guys Brian told you about howwe get the median this is what it lookslike when we get it comes in these bumpslike this they’re ten pound packs[Music]they’re perfectly pre sliced meat and welove it we just like to separate them sothen it gets the marinade gets on allsides of the meat it’s not one big clumpas that doesn’t work well I don’t wantyou separate them and we’re addingmarinade as we go or seasoning as we gohow long will they be tumbling to makesure that that marinade is good in thatmeat there we like to tumble it about 45minutes to an hour I prefer an hour justto make sure it’s all coated really wellit’s good and liquidy and just makes fora better product well then one thingabout that tumbler tell them about thevacuum capacity yeslittle vacuum somewhat for vacuum sealit and it cuts down where we used to dothis in bugs I think they’re called andwe had to let the meat sit for two daysto marinate and this we can do two daysworth of work in an hourso that has saved us a lot of time theresaves a lot of times there’s a lot ofLabor we’re having to wash all thoseloads we’d have like 30 lugs in thecooler and man just did imagine takingthe meat out and then having to wash allthat so from being able to go from thetumbler directly to the smoker thatsaved us a ton of timeall right so y’all can see that shale isjust going to separate like she saidabout 40 pounds of meat and with thatwe’re gonna use 10 pounds of ourseasoning and that’s our ratio andanyway then we’ll put it on the tumblerlet Tyrone do his thing yeah and thenyou know be going to the smoker ThankYou Sal I love that’s what I was likesailors July Alicia lowall right after we get to meet in thetumbler Shayla is going to turn it onand she’s going to create a vacuum whichopens up the pores of the meat and itgets the marinade into the meat like itwould be if it was sitting there for acouple of days now after the vacuum isset we start the tumbling process whichensures that all of the meat isthoroughly seasonedhey guys while we’re uh we’re gonna beloading the smoker here in just a littlebit and we’re gonna go ahead and putsome wood in the waterlook we buy a lot of our wood fromAcademy I know I’ve mentioned Academymultiple times in this video I need tostart getting paid from those guys butlook we buy this B&B they sell a goodvariety and today we’re gonna be smokingwith Pacala we’re gonna do our smokinggun so I’m gonna go ahead and grab yousee they cut these pieces where they fitreal good in our smoker I’m gonna goahead and grab a few pieceswe like to soak it in water for about 20or 30 minutes while we’re loading thesmoker so we’ve always run out here anddo this before we start loading let’s goback inside[Music][Music]okay hey we got the jerky off thetumbler now we’re going to take and dumpit in this busboy and load the smokerand this jerky has been tumbling forabout 50 minutes and so like weexplained she’s got the vacuum tumblerthe the 50 minute tumble is aboutequivalent to two days being in the inthe marinade so we’re not going to sithere and make you watch us unload thewhole thing but we’re gonna load alittle bit of this turkey and talk forjust a second here one star on thebottom can we go up with it we’re usinga southern pride 500 which is one of thebest restaurant smokers it is arotisseriehomolog smoker and we’re smoking thiswith pecan wood today but hey no soul nosawdust here no smoke generators into asmokehouse this thing is a for putting apropane assistant whole log smoker andit smokes as good as any smoker in theworld so we’re really excited to havethis and it’ll hold about 60 pounds atone time and it takes us about 30minutes to get to smoker loaded so we’regoing to keep doing Misha Lila’s a lotfaster than I am Miss shameless youdon’t mind telling you that I talk a lotonce he orders the line so anyway that’sexactly right and look this is the wholeidea of this video we want y’all to seethe behind the scenes exactly what’sgoing on so when you get your bag ofsmoke cops by you you can see how I wasdoingwe don’t farm our jerky out for otherpeople to make and put our name on ityou looking at who makesit’s made with love wanna buy you buythis tooth right here soon anywayshe’s already cracking the whip allright we’ve got the smoker loaded let’sget this puppy fired up baby put thelittle advice for me pleasewill do going to cut the propane on twologs in at a time and this is again thiseconomy proper humidity is vital in thesmoking process now we’re gonna set thesmoker to 190 hey guys we’re back thisburgers been going about three hours at190 I’m gonna check it now and see ifit’s ready to ramp up what’s that likeyour timers going off cuz it’s time tocheck it we’ll go ahead[Music]so let’s bump it up we’re gonna bump itup to 260 early once it gets to 260we’ll cut it off and get her chopped uphey why don’t we want to get the 260well 260 gets us at our our leaf bowlwith it Cobra it’s a lethal step in thehasip plan yeah well actually we’veprobably already had the lethal step butthis is the additional lethal step thatmake sure that any type of bacteria Imultiply anything that is a little bittyand you can’t see it is gonna die rightand then the second reason is themarinade it makesthe most yummiest right to this townwe call it the burn point so you want togo just below the burn point and that’sgoing to make that marinade the mostflavorful and that’s what sets apartsmokehouse Bayou from any big name jerkythat you find in a store because theirsmoke houses will only go to about 175to 180 so they cannot hit that step thatwe do in this smaller smoker soadvantage smokehouse buy you for havingthe southern pride and that’s what we’rethat’s one reason that our method isdifferent from everybody else’s on theon the market I’ve never met anothersmoke master our pitmasters that didwhat we do get up to 260 60 a check onthe here interview yeah hey guys we’reat 260 the ramp process is over Noshayla’s gonna come in with the camerayou’re gonna hear the jerky sizzlethat’s the difference between smokehouseby you and every other jerky on themarket they can’t get your smoke housesup to up but about 185 degrees andthat’s what makes a difference with ourmarinade so come check this outno you gotta when you open up thatsmoker you can see that smoke right upin your face with it I’ll shut up youhear that systemit’s not like thank you yo smoke downspy you jerk he’s the only thing itmakes bacon jealous don’t know if y’allknew that or not alright so what we’regoing to do is let this rotisserie outit’ll cool off a little bit and thenwe’ll get that slicer over here andstart slicing it and then Michelle isgoing to show you how she bags italright okay the smoking process is donethe jerky is ready it’s still quite warmit’s not a little hot the best time toslice it is now so we’re gonna fire upthe o F 19’s this thing makes short workof it and you’ll see see how we get thisjerky sliced into bite-sized piecesso miss Sheila can bang[Music]that’s the smoked pecan right there manthat’s pretty so look we’re gonna finishcutting this up and then shave let’sgoing back some up show you thefinishing process of there and you willhave had a really good tour virtual tourof smokehouse Bayou and how we make thejerky that you guys love so and we lovemaking so anyway let me finish slicingthis and then we’ll get over there tothe bagging section the jerky cut up forus I’m going to show you how I bag a bagI’m the last person that touches yourjerky before it gets shipped out andjust so you know when you order a bagI’ll write you a personal little note oneach each one I get a personal notewritten on there thanking you for yourorder and Andy French fries in thereruns awesome we say our tricky with loveevery piece is is quality controlled byyours truly so to speak Thanks cuz I’mpicky but there’s your bag of jerkythat’s how it’s donejust that simple hey guys I know thisvideo might have went a little longerthan even I hoped for but I want you toknow we took her time we tried to be asthorough as we possibly could we wantedyou to go to get a good indication ofhow your jerky is made but then also ifyou wanted to learn how to make jerkythen we would have given you somevaluable information and hopefully savedyou some time and effort as you go on tomake jerky or whatever and if not thoughhis sub is focussed by you and we’ve gotthe thing where you order any six itemsshipping is free and we also make a bagand send to a deployed active-dutymember or a veteran in your honor sothat’s our way to give back we’reveteran owned operated and we love ourveteran and active duty militarypersonnel so anyway thanks for coming bysmokehouse Bayou we hope to hear fromyou and if you’re ever in Ocean Sprayfeel free to get up with us and come byinternational headquarters[Music]you