Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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148 of 149 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The ultimate guide for making your own jerky!, December 27, 1998
Compared to general-use cookbooks, those with a specific focus, such as this one, are directed at a narrower audience. They tend to be tougher to write because the consumer who picks it up expects more than a mere compilation of recipes. Mary Bell delivers! Her first chapter covers the where's, why's and how's of jerky, even including its background history. She continues by going into more specific topics of preparation and storing the chewy morsels, covering a variety of methods and equipment which may be employed to achieve a variety of results. What follows are about 100 pages of recipes. I was amazed to see how many different kinds of foods may be preserved this way. Sure, I've been making beef jerky for years, usually with a teriyaki marinade...and for variety, I'd add garlic this time, maybe curry powder the next. Who would have thought to write a jerky cookbook? I'm glad Mary did, though. Don't get me wrong. If I'd given it a little thought, I would have come up with the idea of substituting pork or poultry for the beef. But never would I have considered using ground meat...or believe it or not, vegetarian jerky. A few years ago, my husband and I were driving up the California coast, enjoying the scenery and the quaintness of the region, not to mention the clear blue waters of the Pacific near the Oregon border. Every few miles, we would see signs advertising little country stores that sold salmon jerky. We were intrigued enough to stop and sample some and wound up buying a bag to munch on while we drove or to eat at roadside tables in the forests of Northern California. Well, that had been our intention. It was so good, we polished off the bag fairly quickly. Unfortunately, we saw no more of these businesses the rest of our trip. I've been looking for a recipe for this delicious snack ever since. I've done web searches, posted requests in a number of food newsgroups, asked friends, and talked about it to everyone I knew, but I came up with no way to duplicate it. Finally, I got Mary's book and there it was. (Can you tell how excited I am?) Not only salmon, but she also covers trout, cod, tuna, catfish, halibut, sole and other small panfish. Vegetarian jerky? Sure...and you'll be amazed at what she's come up with. We're not just talking about vegetables, either. And to finish it all off, here's a grabber for ya...jerky desserts! No pictures and very few illustrations, but you don't miss them in this book. Matter of fact, I imagine all the jerky would start looking alike after awhile. The format is great: easy to read, with the ingredients listed in boldface slightly larger than the instructions, and each recipe includes a little sidebar that enhances its corresponding dish, either informationally or via interesting anecdotes. Very nicely done and highly recommended.
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35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It's short, fun but complete and to-the-point, August 3, 2004
I can't remember exactly when I became introduced to beef jerky. I believe it was on the way to a Boy Scout camping trip when the troop stopped at a convenience store and one of my fellow scouts bought some of that weird-looking beef jerky stuff sold by the cash register.
Years later, in grad school, I realized I could make jerky in my apartment. I bought a cheap dehydrator and some mixes for making ground beef jerky, and had reasonable success with it, although I'm surprised I didn't get sick with jerky made on a machine with no temperature control and such uneven drying. It was kind of excruciating forming jerky without a jerky gun, and other things took my attention, and the dehydrator got put away.
Another six or seven years down the road, I'm in my career and my own house and the dehydrating bug hit again, encouraged by a desire to dry food for camping, but mostly still to make jerky. After inconsistent results with the old dehydrator, I got a good Gardenmaster (NESCO FD-1018 - my review is on Amazon), and picked up some ground beef jerky packets along with a jerky gun at Outdoor World in Orlando. I was back in the jerkey business, and it was good! However, I don't see the mixes in local stores, and Orlando is an hour drive each way, so I needed to make my own marinade. Would it work as well? I read reviews and finally bought JUST JERKY by Mary Bell.
This book is so very easily and quickly read, although it contains all you need to know. The introductory chapters discuss the history of drying meats, the equipment and procedures, and the physics and biology of making jerky, including discussions of the bacteria that can ruin your day. The book discusses smokers, how to select the right cuts of meat, and marinade ingredients. The author intersperses entertaining stories from her own life and those of people she knows.
Then the book gets into the recipes. There is a chapter on strip jerky (made from continuous strips of meat) which includes recipes for goat, venison, chicken as well as beef jerky (almost any kind of meat can be used with any recipe) Following that are chapters on fish jerky, ground meat jerky (formed into shapes and dried - I highly recommend a jerky gun for this), vegeterian jerky, and finally, a chapter on using jerky which includes recipes for jerky cake and jerky frosting! Really!
I actually read the book, and put it away for several months until the other day when my wife told me I could use the leftover, uncooked half of a roast. I decided to make Jordan's Rowdy Jerky since I had some leftover cheap Scotch from seasoning my bagpipes. Well, neither my wife nor I really cared for that one. Naturally, it tasted fermented, which means you couldn't really tell if it turned bad. I ate it anyway, because I like jerky. It just wouldn't be my first choice. (Or second. Or third.)
I was intrigued by reviews saying this book would show you how to make convincing vegetarian jerky. Now, I have no reason to make vegetarian jerky other than the challenge. (Really, if you're a vegetarian, why would you have a hankering for jerky?) The key ingredient is soy protein, to which the author adds certain ingredients for cohesion, texture and flavor. She recommends a brand called Hearty Natural, but says there are many brands. I don't exactly see a lot of this stuff, and what I found was Yves' Carb Fit Veggie Ground Round. I made the recipe for Tastes-Like-Meat jerky. First problem was extruding with the jerky gun. The soy protein was very lumpy. When it dried, there were individual lumps with material barely bridging to the other lumps. And lots of holes in between. When prying it off the trays, it cracked into small lumps. Now, maybe it'd work better with the Hearty Natural. Maybe I shouldn't have used the jerky gun to form it. But I wasn't impressed. It was crispy (although the author warns you that it dries crisp), and the taste was eh. Yeah. Eh. My wife said, "Tastes like dried vegetables." Which it was. Can't pull anything over on her.
Lest you think I'm nothing but a failure, I decided to try some ground beef recipes, and I'd go out and BUY the ingredients needed. My wife said, "Make some regular jerky." I explained that there is no "regular" jerky, but decided that the Soy Sauce Jerky and Teriyaki Jerky were probably closest to what you buy in the store. In short, they came out fabulously. Both were good, and similar to "store jerky," but my wife decided that the teriyaki was "regular" jerky. So if you want something familiar, I'd start with that. I don't think it was as teriyaki-tasting as store-bought jerky labelled "Teriyaki."
No more trips to Orlando to buy jerky mix. The ingredients are easy-to-find, and you can adjust these recipes to suit your taste. I think I counted 51 jerky recipes, so you can spend some time experimenting. And there are several other recipes for things to make with the jerky. I doubt I will use those personally, as I like jerky just for being jerky, but they're there for those who want them.
Each recipe has a little sidebar with a history of that particular recipe, or related story. One small complaint is that the recipes could give a little more detail, or be a little more consistent from one to the next. For example, one recipe gives more information on carmelizing onions, and another just says "carmelize the onions." Unless you read the first, you might be asking "what is 'carmelize?'" And who reads a cookbook from beginning to end?
My only other complaint is the binding. It does not want to lie flat, and I think I'm about to lose a lot of pages out of it. But if you want to make jerky, you need this book, and it may be the only book you need.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
If you are interested in Jerky this is your book, August 13, 2003
A great book dedicated to Jerky. Covers all aspects of Jerky including history and development. Lots of academic stuff but not too dry. There are some good tips on jerky making though she leaves the details of a specific time and method details to the user guide of the device used (smoker/oven/dehydrator etc). Thats one area I would have liked more specific facts and figures. She does cover minimum time to make the jerky safe though. Jerkey reciepies are many and varied, pushing the envelop and occasionally going through what you might consider "jerky" which to her is any flavored dried meat (and beyond). She has receipes for both strip and ground meat jerkeys and fish as well. The section on vegitarian jerky is truly unique, never seen those before. Will have to give one a try sometime. Most are based on Texurted Vegatable Protien (TVP). The final section of the book really is not about Jerky per say but adding jerky flavor to things you may not have considered (like Ice Cream). They are simple reciepes for a variety of things with a bit of powdered jerkey thrown in for flavor. Its a good book and sticks to the subject but I would like to have seen more specifics. Perhaps more sources for jerky supplies (she gives one) or reviews of Jerky making equipment/supplies. I know that part would go out of date with time but I would have been nice. If nothing else this is certianly an original work. Buy this book and save your self batches and batches of ruined meat trying to learn what she has already done. Its a good place to start for your own experiments.
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