The Great Beef Jerky Taste Test

[hrj]

There's this guy at work who goes fishing regularly and trades parts of his catch for goods in kind. My first trade was for some home-made beef jerky but he found it rather bland. So now I owe him for a second trade and needed to get some outside input on some more strongly spiced recipes. Thus, the beef jerky taste test. I made up nine different recipes (only about 4 oz. of meat each) and set them out at work with comment sheets. The principal taster conceded that some of them were heading in the right direction but needed to be significantly hotter. I think next time I go straight for the fresh hot peppers. The problem is, I have a hard time preparing food that I, personally, consider inedible. But I've got some initial judgments on the first set.

My basic jerky recipe is to take a nice chunk of London broil, half-freeze it so that it slices more thinly, then marinate in the chosen flavorings. (Usually I marinate for a day or two, but this time it was only 4 hours.) Then I put the (gas) oven on the lowest setting that still keeps the flame lit (allegedly 150F), drape the meat across the oven rack, and crack the oven door open. Usually I'll start it going around dinner time, turn the meat just before I go to bed, then take it out when I get up in the morning. Makes the kitchen smell good!

Since I was working from ingredients on hand, some of my inspiration came from a couple of medieval spice mixtures that layla_lilah gave me for 12th night a couple years ago. For initial calibration of hotness, I used some Tabasco that the Elder Brother has on hand.

All recipes were used on 4 oz. of London broil, sliced thinly.

#1: 1 tsp "Speccia Negre e Forte" (see below) in a marinade of ¼ c. red wine and 1 Tbsp wine vinegar
"I smell the twang of vinegar … can't taste the pepper. Good."
"Kinda reminds me of salt & vinegar chips."
"Extremely subtle, not quite verging on bland, but it grows on you."

#2: 1 tsp "Speccia Negre e Forte" sprinkled directly on the meat
"Very good! Spices are very present and hit the mouth immediately."
"Nice mix of spices. Maybe more salt?"
"Bland"

#3: 1 tsp. "Hypocras spice" (see below) in a marinade of 2 Tbsp red wine and 1 Tbsp wind vinegar
"Yummy. Good and flavorful."
"Holiday Spiceblend …"
"Not enough salt but good!"
"Subtle -- nice blend but could be more intense."
"Reminiscent of German holiday wine (Gluhwein ?spelling?)"

#4: 1 tsp "Hypocras spice" sprinkled directly on the meat
"Yumy but could be more intense. Increase ginger."
"Subtle Hawaiian, ginger quality."
"Nice ginger and spice flavors."

#5: ½ tsp each black pepper, cubebs, and grains of paradise, cracked coarsely in a food processor, sprinkled directly on the meat
"Great pepper spice."
"Yummy -- very spicy. My favorite"
"Spicy and good."
"Cracked pepper good!"
"If you like pepper, I guess this one would be good."

#6: 1 Tbsp prepared brown mustard, ¼ tsp hickory smoke flavoring, in marinade of 2 Tbsp red wine
"Nice but very lightly flavored. Try without the wine carrier and maybe a stronger mustard."
"Very nice -- mild."
"My favorite. Lots of different, interesting flavors."
"My favorite too out of all tested so far. I think it's the mustard that makes me happy."
"Great hickory flavor!"

#7: ½ tsp Tabasco sauce in a marinade of 1 Tbsp red wine and 1 Tbsp wine vinegar
"I taste the vinegar, but where's the heat?"
"Light flavor. Needs more wine flavor."

#8: 2 Tbsp soy sauce, ¼ tsp powdered ginger, ¼ tsp Tabasco sauce
"Yum! Very teriyaki-ish."
"Tasty"
"I prefer the spicy Tabasco."
"Definitely a little spicy -- I think it's a nice balance which means it must be way too mild. A bit of an odd aftertaste, though." (this was my comment)
"Very good -- soy sauce gives a punch!"
"This cow did not die in vain."

#9: A dash each of black pepper and salt on each piece of meat
"Slightly smoky, true unadulterated beef flavor. More salt would enhance flavor."
"A little plain, but you can really taste the meat."
"The basic meat … ok but not exciting."
"Yum! Meatilicious. I like the way it was a little moist."
"So-so. More meat tasting compared to the soy sauce and peppery ones."

Prepared spice mixtures
Speccia Negre e Forte: black pepper, cubeb, grains of paradise, cloves, nutmeg
Hypocras spices: sugar, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, galingal, grains of paradise, nutmeg, spikenard

Analysis

The comments caught a few of my taste prejudices. I normally go rather lightly on the salt and am happy to not salt things at all on a regular basis, but in contrast I'm fond of a bit of acid. A lot of the comments called for more salt (in recipes that had none) and noticed the vinegar as a significant flavor where I tend to consider it background. I'm not really a black pepper fan and very much an anti-fan of hot peppers, so the tasters who were looking for those as default flavors tended to like the variants I considered close to inedible. But then, that was the point of this taste test -- to gauge how inedible something has to be for me to appeal to the tastes of a real pepper fan (of either stripe).

Considering the number of comments made, the frequency of positive comments, and whether anyone considered a recipe to be their favorite, we seem to have three gradations:

Favorites: recipes 5 (coarse pepper mix), 6 (hickory-mustard), and 9 (plain salt and pepper)

The last is a bit surprising, although it may be a tribute to the expectation of salt. The coarse pepper mix was too strong for me but seemed to really appeal to the black pepper crowd.

Positive evaluation: recipes 2 (Speccia Negre w/o marinade), 3 (Hypocras spice in marinade), 7 (Tabasco in marinade), and 8 (hot ginger-soy)

I'm a bit surprised that #3 seems to have scored higher than #4 (the same spice with no marinade). I personally liked 4 more than 3 and felt that most of the marinade-based recipes were much too lightly flavored. #2 was very similar to #5 but not as strong, so it seems that if I’m going to do black pepper then it should go whole hog and not be subtle. The two Tabasco-based sauces made this group but I got the sense that the hot-pepper fans considered them to be teases rather than ideals.

Future Projects

The co-workers tended to interpret the Hypocras spices as "winter holiday" flavor, not surprisingly. I may do a full recipe along this line right before Christmas. The coarse cracked black peppers is another candidate for a full batch at some point, but I won't be sharing in it.

But I need further experiments to fulfill my promised trade. I'm thinking of picking up an assortment of fresh and dried hot peppers at Berkeley Bowl and doing an "all hot all the time" assortment for the next experiment.

Comments

[maestrateresa.livejournal.com]

Which of the samples did the guy with the fish like best?

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Alas, he considered the ones with Tabasco to be just barely starting in the right direction. Turns out he isn't a black-pepper fan, so although those were more strongly flavored, it wasn't in the direction he wanted. Hence the planned hot-pepper experiments.