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[Free Mr. Tony]

Made some maple whiskey jerky awhile back. This machine is a great jerky cooker.

[Bar-B-Lew]

Looks good.  What is the low temp that cooker hits?

[Free Mr. Tony]

Looks good.  What is the low temp that cooker hits?

The controller goes down to 170 from the factory. You can mess with the parameters, and change it to 160. You can also change the minimum pellet feed, etc to try to manipulate the controller into doing better at getting low or high, or whatever you want it to do.

I messed with it just for fun for a long time. I could get it to hold a super tight 170, but would get the occasional flameout, so I put the minimum feed back to the original setting. The dome temps will sit around 180-190 when set to 170 on a warm day. The grate level is probably close to 170 at that point, but I haven't checked in awhile. It does a good job with jerky. The center of the grill runs a little hotter so some rotating is needed, but overall cooks pretty even.

I can get my drum down to 150 so I tried making jerky in that last weekend.  It worked pretty well,  but there is hardly any air moving with the fire choked so much so it doesn't dry as well as the pellet grill with the fan and convection current.

[Bar-B-Lew]

I've made it on the MAK 2 Star and the Memphis Elite.  The MAK smoke setting is 160°-175° and seems to work really well.  The Memphis low setting is 180° and does pretty good but not as good as the MAK.  I can fit 4 jerky racks from Cabela's in the MAK and 6 in the Memphis.  I need to get my Traeger XL out of the garage and onto the patio to see what temp the smoke setting is on that and how many racks I can fit into it.  I am thinking 9-12.  Gonna go buy some meat at RD this Friday to make some more jerky in September.

[Bentley]

Did you ever consider putting in 2nd shelves...or does it already have them?  These were custom Binford 6000's...

[pmillen]

I'm going to experiment with that.  One of my hunting buddies replaced cigarettes with jerky.  They're about the same cost retail.

EDIT:  What meat & flavoring (Cabelas) is middle of the road?

[Free Mr. Tony]

I still have the two shelves that came with it. They are actually pretty slick how they hang in the cooker. I usually have plenty of room on the bottom for what I cook, so I've only used them a handful of times.

[Free Mr. Tony]

I'm going to experiment with that.  One of my hunting buddied replaced cigarettes with jerky.  They're about the same cost retail.

EDIT:  What meat & flavoring (Cabelas) is middle of the road?

Depending on the cooker and how much smoke is produced sometimes the jerky can taste like cigarettes, so maybe in his mind he could get the best of both worlds...

I prefer eye of round as the cut. I used London broil last weekend, and that worked almost as well. Cut against the grain unless you love a sore jaw. I typically enjoy wet marinades much more than the dry mixes. I haven't had a dry mix that I didn't think was too salty and/or sort of bland.

Even just dumping a bottle of teriyaki sauce over it for 24 hours produces a better product that the seasoning types in my opinion. The last two batches I made were simply half an onion, teriyaki sauce, and pepper buzzed up in a blender then poured over the meat. I got more compliments on that batch than any other I've made.

I think jerky is one application that a PID controller works better than a timing based one. This grill puts out constant sweet blue smoke even on the lowest setting. My old traeger and even the pg500 struggled to get clean at 170, and that's where you really have to watch it to keep the ash tray taste from happening. I posted some pics a long time ago on pelletheads of the doors of my pg500 after cooking a bunch of jerky and cold smoking. It was like shiny black tar all over. I thought the sweet spot of the pg500 was about 275. Way more nice smoke at that temp that any other pellet grill I've ran that high.

[Free Mr. Tony]

I've made it on the MAK 2 Star and the Memphis Elite.  The MAK smoke setting is 160°-175° and seems to work really well.  The Memphis low setting is 180° and does pretty good but not as good as the MAK.  I can fit 4 jerky racks from Cabela's in the MAK and 6 in the Memphis.  I need to get my Traeger XL out of the garage and onto the patio to see what temp the smoke setting is on that and how many racks I can fit into it.  I am thinking 9-12.  Gonna go buy some meat at RD this Friday to make some more jerky in September.

I seem to go in spurts. I'll find some eye of round for cheap, then make a batch. Remember how good it is, and then go on a run making it every weekend for a month. Then I get tired of dragging out the slicer, cleaning the slicer, laying the meat on the trays, washing all the trays, etc. Repeat cycle.

[Bar-B-Lew]

I bought a Cabela's variety pack that has 4 flavors in it that will do 5 pounds of meat per packet.  Check out my pork jerky thread in how to make pork section.  Just make sure you have at least 5# of meat or slightly more or it may be salty as the meat absorbs the wet mixture when in the fridge for 24 hours.

The MAK2 and Memphis worked really well at low temp in the smoke creation.  I probably had a dozen people try the jerky, both beef and pork that I made, and all of them loved the smoke flavor and mentioned that it was not overwhelming. 

The seasoning packets end up costing about $1 per pound of net jerky meat after cooking.  They sell individual flavors to that are enough to make 15 or 20 pounds in packets to make 5 pounds at a time.

On Amazon, there are a few other brands of jerky seasoning too.  The Cabela's was fine, but I am going to make my own when I am through with all that I bought.  www.jerkyholic.com has some recipes that I plan to try.  I just got a container of the cure this week so I am ready to get started experimenting.  I would start with the Cabela's or one of the other premixed seasonings first and make a batch or so.  Once you go through the process and enjoy what you made, you should be comfortable enough to make your own using recipes online if you have the ingredients.