How to make Deer Jerky, Beef Jerky, or any Jerky on a Traeger pellet grill. By The Bearded Butchers!

hey folks welcome to another video I’mScott Perkins one of the beardedbutchers today we’re going to be makingsome deer jerkyeverybody loves deer jerky it’s one ofthose things you could pass out tofriends family and the thing that’sspecial about today’s deer is my son Benshot it about what was it Saturdaytoday’s Thursday so we’ve had itdry-aging now for about five days in ourcooler and funny story behind this deeris that we went out and we got to thehunting property we had a brand new 350legend was the scope and everythingwe’ve never really hunted with scopeshave we it’s always been shotgun here inOhio so we get out we get all of ourstuff on and he’s like dad you got thebullets and I was like no do you havethe bullets we had the gun what wedidn’t have the bullets but I’m so proudof him because he used the 20 gauge opensights and he had an opportunity to takethis deer trouble was there was a bigbuck running in the pack with thesedough’s and man that got exciting in ahurrybut he kept his cool and he shot thisdoe free standing open sights with the20 gauge about 50 yards put a great shoton it we tracked it recovered it broughtit back put it in the cooler so today sothat’s gonna go ahead and break downthese hindquarters we’re gonna throwthem with the table we’re gonna make yousome jerky and today he wants to use thebeard or butcher bun black for his jerkyso we’re gonna get the jerky trimmed outand we’re gonna get it seasoned and thenit’s going to go on the pellet grillwhich is gonna be the trigger iron wood80-85 so let’s get started so as youguys recall so that’s gonna go ahead andbreak down this carcass much like you’veseen in other videos course this is agood reminder if you haven’t subscribedbecause that’s how you’re gonna stay upto date with most recent projects thatthe beard butchers are working on butright now he’s just pulling out thattenderloin you can see we filled restthis deer and we were careful not toremove our tenderloins in the fielddressing process because these are themost tenderpart of your entire deer carcass so wealways start step one is to peel theseout put them somewhere for safekeepingall right so we’re gonna be using bothhindquarters to make this jerky I knowsome of you are gonna say that you wouldprefer to have the round steaks in thiscase we’re processing the steer exactlyhow a nine year old one says deerprocess and he’s not gonna sit down andeat a round steakhe wants jerky that he can pass out tohis friends his family especially aroundthe holidays this makes a great littlegift item so that’s gonna work this downthrough the ball joint right here yousee kind of keeps putting pressure on itjust to break this open and the reallynice thing about this this gets thereally maximizes the amount of jerkyyou’re going to be able to pull off ofthis roundthere we have it one great looking roundso let’s get it cut up start making somejerkytoday I’m using my 6 inch semi stiffrosewood handled Victorinox knife here’sthe second round if you notice I didn’tsay anything when I was breaking theseoff because Scott told me he wanted todo all the talking so there we go so ofcourse the sheath the steel and theknife come as part of our cutlery kitmine I’ve had probably at least a yearnow on this particular knife so trim theblade down so I start right there bycutting that tendon and then you cancome right across right here where thejoint is and you can just work yourknife sometimes you have to twist yourwrist your elbow get that shank off ofthere that’s going to go over to ourtrimmings pile so at this point we knowthat the femur bone is going to layright in here and you want to kind of goat an angle maybe a thirty degree angleor something like so and you want tostay in between the muscle groups so youdon’t actually cut right into the themuscle itself and when you have a deerlike this it’s nice and tender a lot oftimes you can use your fingers to justso now that’s what we call the the topround got that broke out right thereright here’s our eye of round so you cansee that we’ve got this seam right herepoints to so if you just start with yourknife you can roll that piece out rightthere there’s our eye around right herewe’re going to have our sirloin tip or around tip so we’ll just stay just usingthe tip of the knife now stay it rightalong the bone come right underneaththis bone right herewe’ve got we’ve got it boneless I’mgoing to peel out this this tip righthere that’s going to make a really niceboneless roast for us something we candrop in the crock pot or and throw it onthe smoker now we’re left with thebottom round in this little chunk ofsirloin right here that’s the nice thingabout using that method to pull that outthe ball joint is you do get an extralittle chunk there of sirloin for jerkyso here we just want to start cleaningit up we’ll go ahead and remove thatthat’s going to go into our trimmingspile I’ve got some silver skin rightalong the edge here peel that off nowwhat I like to do is you can you’ve gotthis layer of fat so we can just peelthis right out of here get rid of thatfat so the idea is that we want tomaximize the amount of lean whole musclethat we get off of this that’s of coursegoing to give us the most amount ofjerky whenever we make the jerky we wantit to be a nice tender piece noconnective tissue one of the things forcertain if you’re passing this out youdon’t want to turn any would be hunteror somebody that is new to wild gamedon’t want to turn them off with a pieceof silver skin or sinew so there I havethe the bottom roundcleaned up and ready to cut jerky givethis little sirloin piece taken care ofthere’s not much here but is a nicetender this one’s gonna have aconnective seam right in the center sowe’ll what I like to do when I makejerky is just go ahead and get all thepieces the technical term for this isdenuded which means you’ve taken all theconnective silver membrane out get thatseparatedI guess the fat your your opinion if youwant to leave the fat on some peoplewill appreciate the flavor some somewooden it’s probably probably best justfor most practical purposes to removevirtually all of all of those pieces thetop round your largest piece it’s gonnahave a bit of a connective vein rightherenow one thing you don’t have to worryabout any glands when once you’ve donethis much prep work you’re not going tohave any glands in here just as a resultthis cap right here you wanna find thatnatural seam alright so one roundcompletely trimmed of silver skin gotthe bottom round little sirloin piecesthe eye around and the top round andwe’ll get started on the second hindquarter alright so we’ve got two ofeverything here now because we’ve gotboth of these rounds trimmed out sowhatever we’re making jerky what we liketo do is we like to go across the grainand we make we like to make a sliceabout an inch and a quarter inch and ahalf so you know you want to keep thingseven so I’m just gonna kind of hold itup here and the reason we do this iswhen we get all this jerky cut down it’sgoing to have a it’s gonna have a reallynice tender bite because we’ve cut nowacross the grain so whenever you go tochew this it’s going to pull right apartin fact sometimes when you’re cutting ityou’ll have a little bit of difficultynot pulling it apart so whenever we dothat we get clean slices consistency isthe key here so you want to keep youknow if you don’t feel like you can youcan keep your slices you know an 1/8 to1/4 you know a thicker is fine you justhave to remember you don’t want a bunchof them that are thin that in so varyingsizes so you want to keep your sizesuniform so that way when we go to cookthis it cooks evenly if you see there Ijust it’s literally so tender that itjust pulled apart you can also you canmake you know some sort of tender biteif you wanted you can make these intolarger chunks but this is what we liketo do for our jerky a nice strip about aquarter or so of an inch thickand then going across the grain on eachmuscle group that we work with so thatyou get that nice clean bite nice andtender don’t beat yourself up about youknow the speed or anything like that ifyou if you don’t think you can go quiteas fast so with something like this andthen you want to sometimes you’ll needto flip a piece around just to kind ofmake it convenient for you yeah they’rejust nice if you see a piece that youknow I think might be a little bit thickyou can just knock it down a little bitand the only reason to do that iswhenever you cook it you just wanteverything to be nice and evenyou gotta take a look at what’s going onback here look at that doesn’t that lookgood Ben yeptalk about jerky what about all thosechops uncle Seth cut up man my mouthstarting to water right now we’re just abunch of getting right up on top of itsome tomahawk rib chops some butterflychops some flat irons some of thoseinner loins that we call fish tenderswhich one are you choosing for dinnerone of these perfect you know that’s oneof the great things about deer huntingis it really brings you together I guessany hunting we’re gonna be able to sitdown as a family enjoy this deer that myson harvested he’s gonna feel proud ofsomething because he is feeding thefamily and then he’s gonna have awonderful product and that he can passout with a story to tell about itand that’s one of the great things thatmakes hunting unique is you have allthose stories in that tradition beingpassed along and one of the reasons whywe embrace hunting as much as we do sothere we have it just some really nicelean cut deer jerky so so now that we’vegot this all cut up and in this pan wewant to go ahead and get it seasonedtoday we talked a lot about the amountof seasoning to use I’m just gonna popthis on the scale here real quick I’vealready tared my scale so I know thatI’m gonna need four seven pounds I’mgoing to need seven tablespoons so Iactually have a tablespoon shaker righthere so they make it really convenientfor me we say that you can use one ouncefor two pounds of meat or one tablespoonfor one pound of meat so I’ll just goahead and add a total of seven there’sone two three four five six seven andone more for a little extra kick becauseyou can never really get too much ofthat beard of butcher blend seasoning sonow at this point what we’re going to dois we’re going to go ahead and mix allthis togetherand then we’re gonna let it setovernight we do that now we’re not gonnabe using any cures or anything like thatthis is just our beard of butcher blendseasoning is the only seasoning agent sowe like to do is get it in there goahead and work it around get everythingcovered the salt in that spice isactually going to draw out some of themoisture in the meat and so you’re gonnaget everything coated really nicely hereand then we’re going to set this in thecooler or the refrigerator overnightcome back when it’s all marinated for atleast 12 hours put it on our jerkyscreensand get it in the Trager wood-firedpellet grill and a few hours after thatwe’re gonna have some great deer jerkyso stay tuned so this turkeys beensitting marinating overnight we usuallylike to give it a little mix like I toldyou that salt pulled out a lot of thatjuice smell is incredible so typicallywhat we do is now I went ahead and Ibought these racks on Amazon justbecause it’s gonna make it really niceand easy to transfer this on to thesmoker today we’re going to be using theTragerIronwood 885 one of our favorite modelsthese are the Wi-Fi connected grills soI’ll be able to monitor this cookhowever it’s really it’s it’s anybody’spreference on whatever method they mighthave to cook they can do just about anytype of smoker as long as you have thethe ability to set your temperaturestoday I’m going to be going from 165 forabout two hours I’m going to go up to185 and it’ll likely finish there tillwe get to an internal temperature ofabout 165 so nice thing about this isyou can just kind of work back in tuckthese in they can be slightly touchingeach other because they’ll shrink up alittle bit during the cooking method wecan just put everything lay it right outhere sometimes I like to just create alittle pile that way if I find a longerstrip I can lay it out so the idea iswe’re gonna fill up each tray I thinkit’sto fill up about four of these by thetime we get everything laid out if youhave pieces that are too long you caneither set them aside until you get ashorter piece or we can go back into ourbin because we’re gonna have some thatare or this meat so tender I can alwaysjust take a chunk and just literallypull it in half if I need a shorterpiece there you have it one tray readyto go on the smoker so I’ll get the restof this put on our trays and we’ll getit out get it on the trigger and nextthing we have to do is just give it alittle time we’re gonna have somedelicious jerky all right we’re actingreadythere’s our seven pounds of beer tobutcher blend black seasoned deer jerkytime to head out to the smokertoday we’re using cherry wood pellets sowith the bearded butcher blend blackseasoning and the cherry pellets wemight be able to call this black cherryjerky so what I’m gonna do this is goingto be more of a time time thing than atemperature thing but I am gonna goahead and use my meat probe because mygrill is equipped with one now the thingwith jerky is a lot of times you can’treally find that slice that’s thickenough if you’ve cut it correctly but Ifound one so we’ve got our four trays inhere lined up nice and perfect at thispoint see that beautiful call that sweetblue that smoke that’s one of the thingswe really love about the trigger grilland now we say this all the time meatover fire for millennia mankind has beenusing wood smoke to preserve me andthat’s essentially we’re doing here justwith a modern technology spin on it soanyway beautiful blue smoke that’s goingto give us that really nice flavor sowe’ll go ahead and get this real shutand I’m gonna do 165 for two hours seewhere our temps are at see what thejerky looks like 185 then for a couplehours and I think it’ll be done by thenso let’s let this think purr and comeback and check in a couple hoursall right it’s all over done with butthe eating right Ben so we’re gonnacrack open do what we got in here you goahead do the honors whoo look at thatdoesn’t that look absolutely deliciousnow you know what we do next rightprobably want a whole stick huhshould we hand some off to your brotherooh that looks good so at this point wecan go ahead and pull all these offthat’s what’s nice about using thescreens you can just grab these so wewound up 165 for two hours 185 for twohours I had no trouble reaching internaltemperature at this point it’s just kindof about how you want to dry it down howmuch you want to dry it down we’reprobably going to put this in bags thatway we can pass it out maybe over theholidays here you can always freeze thisstuff so one of the questions we getasked is about like shelf stability orwhatever if you’re not measuring thewater activity you don’t know whether ornot it’s shelf stable because you haveto meet a certain water activity so inthis case put in a ziplock put it in thevacuum sealer put it in the freezer ifyou’re not gonna eat it within a week orso definitely going to probably the bestplace to put it is in your freezer sothere you have it one batch of beer tobutcher black seasoned deer jerky fromthat kids first deer smoked on thetrigger ironwood 885 hope you enjoy thevideo just reminder subscribe if youwant to stay up to tune or up to date onwhat the bearded butchers are up towe’ll be bringing you more also FacebookInstagram Twitter make sure you followyour favorite butchers that’s all we’llsee you next time[Music]