Turning meat into Jerky

[n0xiety]

We really should have the ability to turn meat into jerky. Adding salt and smoking the meat for 6 hours at 80C degrees in an oven should suffice to turn meat into jerky. Sure it won't taste good without the flavours but it would be edible. We would save on weight too since smoking gets rid of the exess water in the meat which takes about 3/4 of its weight. So 1kg of meat would turn into 0.25kg of jerky which doesn't really loose any calorie in the process and can be edible for 2-3 months.

[Be_Lu]

+1

I like this idea

[Dirmagnos]

Technically you dont even need salt if meat is really fresh, like >95% condition should do it. It would taste like paper and look about the same, but hell, its about nutrition, not looks.

It is better with salt, but if youre all out of it, it shouldnt mean that you cant make it.

[Hesha]

Doesn't this only work with really lean meat, because fat goes rancid? In that case, there should be a drop in calories, as you have to cut away all the fatty bits.

[nicko]

Pretty sure a smoker as been suggested a few times already, smoked fish. but yeah it could be used for any smoked dried food. +1

about weight, yes it should weigh less same with when you dry hides. hides seems to weigh the same for some reason which does not make sense.

[n0xiety]

Salt is for better preservation and shelf time not only taste. Other than that i think we allready are getting fat free meat since the bear we kill looks like a 500lbs monster but only gives 35kg meat. Even a 300lbs bear normally gives 40kg meat. But that 40kg is with the fat and all. We seem to be getting pristine meat without a drop of fat from our bears. We must care alot for our healt in this hard survival situation :roll:

[SteveP]

I agree that salt is essential for preservation of smoked meat. You should be able to harvest meat to small strips and fat of various amounts depending on the animal. Bear has lots of fat on it. Fish vary by kind some being more fatty. I like the idea of a smoker and choosing how much meat to preserve. It obviously takes time to smoke something and a typical smoker is made from poles, a tarp or cover or leaves and a small smokey fire that needs to be tended now and then (every three hours?) If you let this fire go out, you could either spoil the meat or restart the process if done quickly enough such as within an hour or two of loosing the smoke fire. The result is lower condition jerked meat.

[metsavend]

I would like to also see heavily salted meat (very old preservation method). Eating it woud make you thirsty, similar to salted crackers.

And frozen meat! Temperature is constantly way below 0'C, usually -10 to -30'C, makes sense to store large amount of meat outside somehow. And it would attract bears and wolfs to come snooping around.

[K63]

Pretty sure a smoker as been suggested a few times already, smoked fish. but yeah it could be used for any smoked dried food. +1

about weight, yes it should weigh less same with when you dry hides. hides seems to weigh the same for some reason which does not make sense.

Good points!

[Sly]

+1 to jerky. Or/and the pemmican. For example, jerky+berries+cat tails+maybe something else+some crafting=pemmican. In any case, lightweight, long-not-spoiling and nutritional food - self made analog of military rations.

Sounds great, is not it?

[Boston123]

Guys ..... you don't need to salt meat, not when you plan on smoking it. If you did, then making smoked meat (which is actually different from making jerky, btw) would have been impossible anywhere not near a seacoast.

Smoked meat: lean meat preserved via exposure to smoke, which both removes water content and forms a "coating" of particles on the outside of the meat, which prevents bacterial growth.

Jerky: It is the Anglicization of the Native American word "Charqui", which in turn refers to lean meat that has had the water content removed via exposure to sun(heat) and/or heavy salting.

The two terms have kind of become one in the modern mind, but the actual processes and outcomes are pretty different.

Smoked meat essentially can't go bad, while jerky can. Smoking meat is also almost infinitely faster and simpler than salting meat.

To smoke meat, you cut it into thin, lean strips only a couple of mm thick, then suspend it over a low, smoky fire for a couple of days. If the fire is too high/hot, the meat will get cooked instead. To exedite this process, "hold in" the smoke by using cloth or even pine boughs around the fire. I've used deer hides, to both smoke the venison and make buckskin ( aka leather) at the same time.

Requiring salt for the smoking process is little more than artificial difficulty.

[akodo1]

Thing is, it's freezer temperature everywhere. Frozen meat can last a year. There is no need to smoke, jerk, or salt the meat.

Regarding dried meat (using smoking), as the water for the spoilage bacteria isn't present, the meat can keep for about a year as well...but in practice unless very carefully stored the meat can rehydrate a bit from moisture in the air. It would be darn hard for our survivor to keep the meat dry inside a building with all the snow always blowing in etc.

Either way, dried or frozen, the products like granola bars, MREs, cans of condensed milk, those should be lasting 10X what either frozen or dried meat lasts. Doesn't make sense to me for the game to introduce methods of preserving food inferior to modern canning, drying, and preservative compounds, but jury-rigging a primitive method produces food that doesn't degrade.