As a dietitian, I feel compelled to confess that this method of dehydrating jerky is no longer considered food safe. That said, we’ve been preparing our jerky over the woodstove for years, and we know our ancestors dried over a fire for centuries.

To ensure rapid dehydrating, we only hang our jerky when the weather will allow us to keep a fire burning day and night for several days. The drying process takes about 4-5 days. We tend to err on the side of safety and may leave it longer than necessary.

I haven’t come up with a soy-sauce free version of marinade yet, and am open to suggestions for a truly farm sourced recipe. Allowing for salt, I may try salt, vinegar, maple syrup, smoked hot pepper sauce, juniper berries, and spicebush berries next year.

This past year we used:

• · 1.25 bottles soy sauce
• · ¼ bottle Worcestershire sauce
• · 2-4 Tbsp. homemade smoky hot sauce
• · 2 T balsamic vinegar
• · 2T honey
• · Dash each of cumin powder and cinnamon
• · 4 cloves fresh garlic.

We soak and store in the freezer until ready to hang.

In years past, we used the less desirable cuts of meat for jerky, but this year we sacrificed a rump roast or two. We jerky our young goat weathers (castrated males). Goat meat lends well to a jerky marinade flavor. And during this year of near constant cooking, we wanted to have a supply of ready-to-eat snack food on hand. I think it will pair nicely with dried apples.