Jerky Making - any tips/tricks?

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Smoking Westy

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First off I've dug through a number of old threads on here and gathered a few ideas but I wanted to ask the question before jumping into this project. I've made a fair amount of jerky but I have always done it with my dehydrator in the past. The last few years I've started using Hi Mountain cure/seasoning vs. doing a homemade wet marinade and have been happy with the flavor profile but I really want to get some smoke flavor on it.

For the folks making jerky in their outdoor cookers - any tips and tricks? I've got a kamado and a WSM at my disposal for cooking equipment and I can finish it up on in the dehydrator if need be.

My buddy has a freezer full of elk so we are thinking about starting a batch this weekend. Temps are supposed to be 90+ with heat indexes over 100 degrees so cold smoking is out of the question.
 
We've been doing ours on our pellet grill, so we can put it at 160° and let 'er buck. I guess you'll need to keep close tabs on it, not sure what your minimum temp can be with decent smoke (no white stuff) going.
 
I rigged this up in the wsm awhile back. It's just a couple of "s" hooks with wooden dowels cut to size. You could easily get a few more in there. It worked fairly well, but not the most simple setup ever.



I finished them on the warm setting in my oven.
 
I think I'll be able to hold temps at 200 or slightly above in my WSM, especially if I filled the water pan with ice - good clean fire is definitely going to be a key.

Free Mr. Tony - thanks for the dowel rod idea, I was wondering if I would be better off hanging it or laying it flat and using both racks. Definitely something to think about.
 
I had the 18.5 so not much room on the grates, and my jerkey racks wouldn't fit.

I did my fire like this. It worked pretty well, but not a super clean burn this way obviously. Once they sat for a day or two, the stronger smoke mellowed quite a bit.


I can't remember for sure, but I think I hovered around 150 for the most part. Just torched the first section to get it going, and let it burn itself around the ring.
 
I've done it in my shirley running temps around 150-175 and it worked just fine. Dried the beef in about 5-6 hours. There is a lot of draft in the shirley, so I'm sure that helps with drying it out. I don't see any reason why you couldn't run a lower temp in your WSM. In my UDS I used to run at 130-150 all day long for smoking sausage.. Set it up for a minion burn, crack one intake vent a little, add like 4-6 hot coals and see where she lands. it shouldn't take much intake to get it there, and even if you wind up just experimenting with temps, you won't waste much fuel. Ice in the waterpan will help too, but I never needed it..
 
When I make jerky I use an A-Maze-N pellets smoker to enhance the flavor. Then I use about 4 briquettes in my insulated vertical to keep the temperature below 150° just to dry the jerky.

If you cant get the lower temperatures you can still use the dehydrator or the oven as others do after cold smoking the jerky for adding flavor.
 
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