Adventures of the Accidental Chilehead

by
The Sauce Goddess

Adventures for the trail

My nephew Parker is hiking the Appalachian Trail right now. If you’ve been to the Fiery Food and BBQ Show then you might have met him, slinging sauce and having a great time. He’s not into super hot food, but loves a bit of heat. He has been a guinea pig taste tester for my chilehead adventures on many more than one occasion. Given a little time in the fiery world, who knows, he could be another Accidental Chilehead like me.

The reason I mention Parker is that he posted to his friends on Facebook that he needed food, words of encouragement and so on. Packages can be sent and held for him at the Post Office (thank you USPS for your services). A request for trail food is not something I can pass up. So I decided to make him some treats-Sauce Goddess style.

Jerky 2 ways

For both these recipes, we will be using a dehydrator (you can also use the oven on lowest temperature with the door slightly ajar), meat and spice rub. That’s it. Super easy, super tasty meat for a skinny kid on the trail.

All you need for these 2 recipes is lean meat, a spice blend you like and a heat source at about 140-170 degrees.

Sweet Heat Ground Turkey Jerky
1.25 lb. ground turkey (pressed really dry with lots and lots of paper towels)
and
3 Tbsp. Sauce Goddess Sweet Heat
Mix the 2 ingredients together well.
Press into very thin flat disks (blobs) or whatever shape you want. The thinner they are the quicker they dry. Place into dehydrator loosely so they don’t touch.
Dry for 8 hours or until they don’t flex when pressed or squeezed.

Moroccan Twist Flank Steak Jerky
1 lb. of flank steak strips, cut across the grain of the meat very thin
and
3 Tbsp. Sauce Goddess Moroccan Twist
Mix the 2 ingredients together well.
Place into dehydrator loosely so they don’t touch. Dry for 8 hours or until they don’t flex when pressed or squeezed.

Now obviously you could use another spice. Better yet if you like it hot, add some scorpion pepper powder to sweet heat and ghost chile powder to Moroccan Twist. That would give you some killer spicy jerky. For my “hiker trash” nephew, I chose to keep it mildly spicy. No one wants to hit the trail with a burn that you’ll feel twice, if you know what I mean.

**Note about making jerky – since you can’t taste it for flavor, I use the same technique I use when I make sausage; I take a small piece and cook it, taste it and adjust from there.