So I'm doing a little research, again...into dehydrating lean hamburger meat, again....
Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh! For crying out loud!! What's the final word? Safe, not safe, aliens will abduct me, what!?!
So far, what I've gotten is that it's perfectly safe...but not because of the possibility of spoilage depending on storage...don't do it at all...freeze it after and all is fine.
So I turn to you, dear readers....advice, suggestions, what have you...I welcome your input.
For what it's worth, the reasoning is this...I have no desire to try to make it to the Commissary with two (possibly three...don't ask) screamers in 10 below snowbound weather at any point this coming winter. And being that my kids and myself are serious carnivores...well, we like our chili, spaghetti and all that good stuff to contain meat.
5 comments:
I'm lazy and mostly just cook and freeze my hamburger meat, but have done the dehydrated route.
Get the leanest hamburger you can find, fry (and crumble) it in a pan, then pour off the fat. Add some water, get that to boiling, pour it off, repeat. All the fat has to be gone.
Now dry in a dehydrater or an oven set on 'warm' overnight.
Put in glass jars or plastic baggies (I much prefer glass, but have used plastic ziplock bags) that are clean and sterile, be as sanitary as possible during transfer. Store in cool dry place.
When needed, soak in water for 15 minutes or so.
How long will it last? Longer than six months is all I can say.
Could you pressure cook it in jars rather than trying to dehydrate it?
If not, on the subject of dehydrating, they have on the market a device that is used to make hamburg into jerky. They sell them at places like Cabela's (the outdoor sporting goods store). My thought is that if they sell these things, then it must be perfectly safe to dehydrate hamburger. What I would do is to make it into ultra thin patties or maybe, little blobs about the size and thickness of your pinky finger and then dehydrate those (after I marinate it in some sort of seasoning, depending on how it will later be used). When the meat is good and dry, I would vaccuum seal it into a jar. I wouldn't bother with freezing it - seems redundant ... I mean, if you're going to freeze it anyway, why bother dehydrating (for preservation purposes, I mean - not for saving space purposes :) - , but you do want it to be in an air-tight container, because it's exposure to air that allows the bacteria to grow resulting in food spoilage.
Why not make chili/sauce and can it? Seems like it would save a lot of bother to me...
A couple of years ago, I dehydrated several pounds of ground beef, to make mixes for a camping trip. I used directions/recipes out of "The Hungry Hiker's Book of Good Cooking" by Gretchen McHugh. Not all of them were used, and the last one was used about a year later, and it was still just fine. I just fried it up, drained it on lots of paper towels until most of the grease was off, and put it in the Excaliber (140* for 6-8 hours is what the directions were. I think it took a bit longer) on paper towels until it was dry and not leaving grease stains on the paper. 1# of ground beef makes 1 1/3 cup dried. I learned that when rehydrating it, use boiling water to start with and give the meat at least a half-hour to reconstitute.
If you can't get the book in Germany, e-mail me and I'll send you out the recipes. North sky light AT yahoo DOT com
For Germany the low temps last winter were more like teens and single digits.
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