On Sat, 4 Nov 2000, Lauri Light wrote:

> 1. Is it possilbe to dehydrate ground meat? Any suggestions how?

Yes.  Black and Decker makes a "jerky gun" which you can buy at
Walmart.  It's much like a caulking gun, with various nozzles for
strips or tubes of jerky from ground meat.  It comes with
seasoning packets that contains all sorts of crap, but it's easy
enough to devise your own seasonings.

If you're using ground beef, I'd say a minimum is 85% lean, and
90% lean is better, in my opinion.  There are other opinions,
however, so you should experiment.  Anything less that 85% lean
results in fat dripping and pooling in the dehydrator.

> 2. Is it SAFE (in terms of bacteria/parasites) to dry ground meat or ANY
> meat without cooking first?

The drying pretty much kills the bacteria, but if you're really
concerned about this, buy lean meat and tell the butcher to grind
it for you on the spot.  This way you know that the meat hasn't
been sitting around in the ground state for very long before you
dry it.

For the record, I make jerky from off-the shelf ground beef quite
often and I've had no problems at all so far.

Todd Moody
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