Skilled Urban Survivor

Archive for the ‘survival skills’ Category

The Scouts are coming over next week to learn how to make beef jerky for their camping and hiking trips next summer. Anyone who has made the stuff knows that it isn’t a one step, one hour affair, so I’ve been preparing by making some ahead of time so that they’ll get to go home with the finished jerky.

A friend donated some old elk that had been sitting in his freezer for a while. Like giving grand kids good expensive ice cream, the Scouts aren’t going to care if their jerky is a little freezer burned or old, they’ll like anything that smells remotely like the stuff.

Actually I created kind of a reputation for my smoked jerky and myself. I showed up at a girls’ camp a few years ago with my jerky. I’ve been making it for almost 40 years and have developed some skills along the way. When their brothers found out about the treat at girl’s camp, they wanted some too. Ever since they’ve been calling me jerky man. Elk isn’t the only thing I smoke. I’ve found that smoking is an excellent way to get rid of last year’s trout. It doesn’t last long when I constantly have a bag in my brief case to share with who ever happens to be around.

So when the scouts come over on Wednesday, they’ll learn the fine art of cutting away the fat, so all that you end up with are nice long strips of good meat. The first step in making good jerky.

Marinating comes next. My marinade recipe changes from what I have on hand. It always has a soy sauce base. With onion and garlic salt, and paprika from my Hungarian forefathers. A good trick I learned is to freeze the marinade between batches of meat. I never mix meat and fish. The tastes just don’t mingle. I don’t throw it away until I’ve used it a few times, and it lowers the overall cost.

Then I lay the marinated strips on the drying racks overnight. Letting them get a good glaze from the overnight set, makes for a softer, chewier jerky.

After they’ve set at least 8 hours or so, they go into my smoker. My wife does a lot of dehydrating, and has the best there is, but the smoker adds that extra flavor you just can’t get from drying them out. I use an electric smoker, plugged into a power switch in my garage. The smell is really too strong for the house. In the summer time, when it sits out on the deck, all the neighbors are probably wondering who is barbequing at 2:00 AM. Depending on when I start the jerky, is when it gets to smoking. That’s why sometimes it’s going at that time.

Jerky, whether beef, elk or trout is a great survival food. You don’t have to have a smoker, or a dehydrator, or even an oven. An old car, sitting in the sun, makes a great place to dry food, as the inside temperature stays hot and it keeps the bugs and flies off. Pulling all the moisture out of meat makes it last without a refrigerator. When you make it yourself, you are controlling the salt and sugar in the final product, and it doesn’t have any of those nasty artificial preservatives in it. The actual drying and salting process through the marinade are the preservatives. Making your own jerky is a good and easy project that will help  you be more prepared for whatever might happen in the future.

Here’s a good marinade recipe:
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup salt
2 cups soy sauce
1 cup water
1 cup red wine (we used grape juice)
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp Tabasco sauce
Place fat trimmed and sliced meat in cool brine for 8 hours or overnight. Remove meat and allow to air dry 4-6 hours. Then place in smoker 12-16 hours.

My smoker is a Little Chief. I’ve had it forever and it still works great. Here’s a link for one just like mine, plus the chips you put in the bottom for the campground flavor. 

Related Blogs

• Char Broil Offset Smoker American Gourmet Deluxe Grill | spacesell.com
• An Urban Survival Guide You Need to Have
• The Dutch Oven Survival Kit | The Survival Mom
• The Revival of Smoke Cooking With Gas Smoker | Citrus Juicer Reviews

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We’re having a huge gathering of family and friend at our place this year for Thanksgiving. We decided that we’re going to eat in the barn and we bought a new space heater so everyone stays warm. We don’t keep animals there. It’s strictly for equipment and working, but since we don’t have a 5th wheeler or a bunch of Jet-skis, there’s plenty of room for everyone to sit together at a very long table.
My wife loves to cook, but feeding 25 plus people by herself is not exactly her idea of fun for Thanksgiving. So everybody pitches in and brings stuff, she gets to cook a little and I do the turkey. This year, with the amount of people it will be two turkeys. And cooking two turkeys in one oven and having them ready- hot together is kind of an impossible feat. So out comes the deep fat fryer.
I’ve actually been using this method for almost 10 years. The turkey comes out moist and tender. You can use a cheap turkey and it tastes as good as the fancy butter basted, and it’s done in about half an hour.
I’m sure you’ve heard the horror stories of people burning down their houses. Or dropping frozen turkeys into boiling hot grease with a resultant geyser that would put Old Faithful to shame and issue catastrophic burns to the cook. Actually deep frying a turkey properly can take almost as much time as cooking the traditional way, the time spent being in preparation instead of actual cooking.
The first thing, like the traditional method is to thaw the turkey slowly in the fridge, two to three days before. Preparation begins the afternoon ahead of, when I start mixing the basting juice. Good thing it’s the afternoon before, because I’m pretty particular about my kitchen and folks not getting in my way.
First you clean the extras out of the cavity and wash it with warm water, then pat it dry a bit. Grandchildren have been known to scream and run when I pull out the basting hypo. Actually I feel like Steve Martin in Little Shop of Horrors. It’s a pretty powerful looking weapon. But I only use it on the bird, pushing my secret basting sauce deep within its muscle parts. Then the whole thing goes in the basting pan and sits in the fridge until I get ready to cook it the next day.
A few hours before dinner is going to be served. I take my tank of peanut oil outside and pour it in the fryer. It doesn’t matter if there is a foot of snow on the ground, frying a turkey is an outside job. Buying all that peanut oil can get a little pricey, but I strain it and re-use it. “According to the Texas Peanut Producers Board, peanut oil may be used three or four times to fry turkeys before signs of deterioration begin. Such indications include foaming, darkening or smoking excessively, indicating the oil must be discarded. Other signs of deteriorated oil include a rancid smell and/or failure to bubble when food is added.”
Peanut oil is the best because of its taste and high flash point, but you can use any cooking oil made for deep fat frying. Lowering the bird into the bubbling, sizzling oil should be done very slowly and carefully. Keep the oil temperature to between 325-350. Turkeys 12 pounds and under fry for 2-1/2 minutes per pound, and 12 pounds and over 3 minutes per pound. If your turkey is floating it is overcooked. Spectators should stand at least 10 feet back, and stay out of the way.
Deciding when the bird is done is somewhat tricky. Under cooked is generally better than over, to retain the moistness. We have been known to microwave turkey parts because they were a little too rare. Remember that the turkey will continue to cook internally, even after its pulled out of the oil. The heat of the oil sears the outside of the turkey and all of its natural juices, plus those that were injected stay inside. It’s what gives the meat its moisture and tenderness.
The deep-fat fryer, stand and propane tanks are some of the best investments that you can get for preparedness. My wife uses the set up in the summer to can with because it keeps all the heat and humidity out of the kitchen. Being able to quickly boil large amounts of water would come in very handy for washing and sterilizing water during an emergency and the whole set-up can be used for other cooking methods. We’ve done the turkey in the cast iron funnel cooker and that comes out pretty tasty too.
You won’t end up with a Norman Rockwell turkey if you prepare it this way, but frying a turkey is a taste-treat you won’t soon forget. The fat itself is not absorbed into the bird, so calorie wise, it makes no difference. Your wife will love you forever for keeping the turkey mess out of the kitchen. And you’ll be the hero of the Thanksgiving table with this moist, delicious bird.

Here’s a link to some more tips on injecting the turkey and some recipes for the marinade/basting juice: http://www.the-perfect-turkey.com/turkey-marinade.html

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Went to the movies with my wife tonight to see the block buster, 2010. I really enjoy action-adventure and special effects. From the previews this looked to be a good one, if you could say that watching the earth destroy itself could be entertaining. The 21/2 hours went by quickly. My wife dozed off in Star Trek, but this movie kept her attention, even through what might be considered the slow parts. They weren’t slow to me.
As we talked on the way home, she brought up the point, would survival techniques apply in such a devastating situation? People were instantly killed either by drowning, burning, or crushing, so emergency medical preparedness would hardly matter. Storing food, water, and shelter, unless there were parts of the center of North America left relatively untouched, would also have been a moot point. They would have gone the way of the people. Even having a pack to grab and run, there was no time to grab, just run. The wilderness itself, was pretty much toast, so plans for escaping there, and hunting and fishing for sustenance wouldn’t have worked either.
The point that I took from the movie, is the advantage of developing a mind set of always being prepared. The hero could help his family because he was two steps ahead of disaster. He observed the signs, he put clues together and he felt that things weren’t right. Preparing for the future, we need to take the same attitude. Be observant. Watch, listen analyze. There are clues right now, pointing in directions that most of us are not planning on going. Giving us gut feeling that we need to be more prudent with all of our resources. That whether we have 3 years, or 3 months, our country is in for some rocky times
Relying on those intuitions, paying attention, planning and preparing will help make us more prepared for whatever happens in the future. And being prepared will bring us better peace of mind.
If you’re interested in learning more about the 2012 phenomenon, this e-book is well researched. The author got his survival skills by being there when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.

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