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Product Review - TSM Products Jerky Cutting Board

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Bar-B-Lew:
Product Review - TSM Products Jerky Cutting Board
Purpose of the Product:
The TSM Products Jerky Cutting Board is a poor man’s automatic slicer that theoretically has 3 slicing thicknesses.  You can use this piece of equipment without the inserts (~½” thickness), with one insert (~⅜” thickness), or with both inserts (~¼” thickness).  You set the meat in the tray and slide the knife through the slot, and then slide it through the meat to slice it to your desired thickness of the three choices.

Pros of the Product:
1. At $25-$30, I find it to be very economical.
2. Comes with a slicing knife.
3. Inserts provide 3 choices for thickness of slices.
4. Board is stainless steel which I prefer to wood alternatives that are available in the marketplace.

Cons of the Product:
1. Knife is not very good and arrives dull.  It is serviceable after a sharpening, and needs to be sharpened before each use.  Quite frankly, I am a little concerned to use another knife because it does hit the metal of the board when sliding through the slot to slice the meat.
2. It is challenging to get the final slices from your piece of meat.  I cut the tip of my finger the first time I used this to cut a small pork loin for jerky.  I bought a tool that is used to hold food when using a mandolin that saved any further cuts to my fingers the second time I used this.
3. The meat needs to be semi frozen to make the cutting much easier.  I think that is probably the case with a meat slicer too with most cuts of meat that are soft as I witnessed last night when my Dad finished slicing my eye of round for my beef jerky.

Impressions and Additional Thoughts on the Product:
The product is a good value comparative to buying a meat slicer if your only objective is to slice meat for making beef jerky.  It serves its purpose and is very easy to clean.  It seems to have a solid quality construction too.  Again, the knife is not top quality, but for the total price of the product you probably shouldn’t be expecting a very good knife.  It is serviceable with a good sharpening and gets the job done.

Would You Recommend This Product:
I made beef jerky a few months ago, and a friend’s Dad sliced the meat at a local meat wholesaler where he used to work.  I stumbled across this product on Amazon, and bought it because I didn’t want to be tied to someone else to slice my meat if I wanted to make more beef jerky.  So, yes, I would recommend this product if you were a small batch beef jerky maker (i.e. < 5 pounds per cook), or if you have a lot of patience and time on your hands if you are cutting 20 pounds of meat for a large jerky cook.  I didn’t have the patience and after 5 pounds called my Dad and told him I was driving to his house for him to slice the remaining meat on his Hobart commercial slicer.  However, I will continue to use this and I am glad that I have this piece of equipment in my cooking arsenal.

Product in Packaging


Contents of the Product (stainless steel slicing tray/board, 2 food safe plastic inserts, slicing knife)


Tray/Board with insert inlayed


Tray with inserts and chunk of semi-frozen meat ready to be sliced


Examples of slice quality

Bentley:
Another good one!  I could have used it to get that Flank at a half inch for the Tenderizer the other day!

Queball:
Sweet! Bar-B-Lew. .... If you're a jerky maker, that's got to be the right toy for consistency. May sound stupid, but for that operation is a super fine slicing knife really necessary with the firmed up meat? .... Nicely done. Thank You.

Bentley:
So am I to understand that the thickness is determined by using (or not) the white plastic inserts?  They don't even seems like they would be 1/16" thick?  They must be much thicker then they look!

Queball:
Look at the second picture and the bottom left corners of the 2 white inserts. They're much bigger than a 16th of an inch. ...... I'd say. I think they are translucent and the top edge is being washed away by the light.

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