Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from Tim Ferriss‘ new book, The Four Hour Chef. 

An Introduction to Dehydrating Food

Dehydration is all about removing water from food. Doing this helps to preserve the food (bacteria need water) and concentrate flavor. It’s a common misconception that you need heat to dehydrate food. But low humidity, not heat, is the driving force behind dehydration. Warming the air surrounding the food helps keep it dry, but if the air doesn’t move, the food will stay wet. So when dehydrating food in the kitchen, make certain that air can freely circulate around it.

The 4-Hour Chef: The S... Ferriss, Timothy Best Price: $3.49 Buy New $31.90 (as of 01:00 UTC - Details) Sidenote: You can achieve the same preservation of dehydration by leaving the water in food but making it unavailable to bacteria. Just add substances like sugar and salt, which bind to water molecules and lock them away. Lox (salt-cured salmon) and salted butter are safe to keep at room temperature for this reason—but unsalted butter is not!

The Best Jerky in the World

Sometimes a survival skill isn’t just about preparing for hard times. Six-time New York Times best-selling author Neil Strauss learned this while writing about apocalypse-proofing your life in his book Emergency. Yes, learning to preserve meat was useful. But learning to flavor meat was an art.

In search of the perfect marinade, he polled everyone: hard-core survivalists, friends’ grandfathers, chefs, and beyond. Then he split-tested the best and simplest recipes that didn’t require a smoker or a food dehydrator. He submerged near-identical meat slices into 2–5 containers of marinade at a time. Sometimes he tested a different brand or amount of teriyaki sauce, and other times he added a random ingredient like truffle oil or mustard. It became something of an obsession.

The following recipe is what won all the taste tests.

Nesco FD-61WHC Snackma... Best Price: $61.51 Buy New $68.99 (as of 09:35 UTC - Details) This recipe is intended for home cooking, not for the wilderness, but it can be adapted for the wild.

Hands-on Time

15 minutes

Total Time

15 minutes plus 24 hours for marinating and up to 24 hours for drying and cooling

Gear

• Knife Pyrex Simply Store 11-... Buy New $11.29 (as of 02:05 UTC - Details)
• Large container with lid
• Aluminum foil
• Wooden or plastic serving spoon

Ingredients (to make 2.3kg (5lb))

• 2 kg (5 lb) lean brisket
• 470 ml (2 c) Kikkoman soy sauce
• 470 ml (2 c) Worcestershire sauce (Neil likes Lea & Perrins)
• 470 ml (2 c) thick, flavorful teriyaki sauce (Kikkoman Takumi Garlic & Green Onion or, Soy Vay Veri Veri Teriyaki)
• 240 ml (1 c) liquid smoke (it’s not always easy to find, so any brand will do)
• 120 ml (1/2 c) Karo dark corn syrup (you can also try blackstrap molasses) Soy Vay Veri Veri Teri... Buy New $16.35 ($0.26 / Ounce) (as of 11:15 UTC - Details)
• 3T garlic powder
• 3T onion powder
• 3T sesame seeds
• 3T brown sugar
• 1t cayenne pepper

PREP

00Put the meat in the freezer for an hour to make slicing easier. Slice meat with the grain as thin as possible (less than 0.6 cm or 1⁄4″). If you’re lazy or not great with the knife, call the butcher ahead of time and ask him to slice 2 kg (5 lb) of lean brisket at this thickness. The leaner the meat, the better and longer-lasting the jerky.

Read the Whole Article

$post_author: WP_User Object
(
    [data] => stdClass Object
        (
            [ID] => 5860
            [user_login] => no_author
            [user_pass] => 6581364babeda3eebbeb65d5094e43d1
            [user_nicename] => no_author
            [user_email] => [email protected]
            [user_url] => 
            [user_registered] => 2013-07-08 16:44:09
            [user_activation_key] => 
            [user_status] => 0
            [display_name] => No Author
            [type] => wpuser
        )

    [ID] => 5860
    [caps] => Array
        (
            [author] => 1
        )

    [cap_key] => wp_capabilities
    [roles] => Array
        (
            [0] => author
        )

    [allcaps] => Array
        (
            [upload_files] => 1
            [edit_posts] => 1
            [edit_published_posts] => 1
            [publish_posts] => 1
            [read] => 1
            [level_2] => 1
            [level_1] => 1
            [level_0] => 1
            [delete_posts] => 1
            [delete_published_posts] => 1
            [email_single_user] => 1
            [email_multiple_users] => 1
            [tablepress_edit_tables] => 1
            [tablepress_delete_tables] => 1
            [tablepress_list_tables] => 1
            [tablepress_add_tables] => 1
            [tablepress_copy_tables] => 1
            [tablepress_import_tables] => 1
            [tablepress_export_tables] => 1
            [tablepress_access_options_screen] => 1
            [tablepress_access_about_screen] => 1
            [author] => 1
        )

    [filter] => 
    [site_id:WP_User:private] => 1
)

get_the_author_meta: 

$bio: 

$bios: Array
(
)