Just for the fun of it, I thought I'd offer this little project we did today. There has been some mention of dried meats for trail, and other uses in various threads, so here's a look at drying your own ground meat.
If you are starting with home ground venison, beef or pork, you can eliminate a lot of this prep needed to render out as much fat as possible. But we're going to assume you got your burger from the grocery store, or meat processor and fat was added.
The first step is to crumble the meat into a skillet and cook it down a bit. At this point, just get the burger cooked completely. Blot or pour off as much water/grease as you can. When the meat is thoroughly cooked, transfer it to a colander. Rinse the meat under hot running water to flush as much grease as possible off. After thoroughly rinsing, let it drain for several minutes, tossing occasionally.
When you get done, you'll have a pot of cooked ground meat with most of the fat removed.
Put the drained meat back into a DRY skillet, and cook some more over medium heat. Stir often to prevent sticking. You should see some more grease/liquid in the bottom of the pan as the meat steams. Keep cooking and stirring 1) until there is no more steam, of 2) the pan becomes dry and no liquids are noticeable.
Transfer again to a bowl lined with paper towels to catch any remaining liquid. Let it cool enough to handle.
Now you can put it in your dehydrator. I used the fruit roll up trays, but you can line your trays with plastic wrap. The dried meat will be fine and crumbly, so you need something to catch it all. Since the meat is now cooked, process at 130
o in your dehydrator until you have "gravel".
That's how I did it. I'll post a follow-up picture of the finished product in a few hours when it's done.
There are some other methods, which I'll mention.
Variation 1:
Instead of using the double fry method, if you have a big pressure cooker or pressure canner, put the RAW meat in a metal colander inside a metal bowl on the bottom of the cooker. Process a 10 psi for 90 minutes. The ground meat will be fully cooked, and virtually all the excess moisture/fat forced out into the catch bowl by the pressure. Proceed to drying.
Variation 2:
If you don't have a dehydrator, after the second cooking put the meat in a roasting pan. Place it uncovered in a 200
o - 250
o oven, and stir it every 15 minutes (like you would party mix, or pumpkin seeds) until you have a roaster full of "gravel".
You can put the finished product in freezer bags in the freezer, or you can do as we do and vacuum seal it in Mason jars. The shelf life is up to 4 years in the freezer, and about 1 year vacuum sealed at room temperature.
FWIW.... Any questions, please ask.
