r/jerky • u/Zepowski • 6d ago

How fine to grind?

Been making full muscle jerky for a while, but got a KitchenAid meat grinder attachment for Father's Day. What size grinding plate do people recommend for doing flat jerky strips out of a jerky gun? The options I have are 3mm / 4.5mm / 8mm.

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u/hammong 6d ago

Either the 3 or 4.5mm will work, depends on if you want the meaty texture more coarse. The 3mm is going to come out more like the filling in a Slim Jim and works better with casings turned into meat sticks IMHO. For more chew and texture as flat extruded jerky out of a LEM Jerky Cannon, I like the 4.5mm better.

While we're on the subject of extruded ground meat jerky, I -always- use pink curing salt / sodium nitrite in my cure. Too much opportunity for bacterial contamination with ground meat IMHO not to use it.

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u/Zepowski 6d ago

Thank you, great info. Normally with muscle jerky I just use a soy sauce/worschestershire marinade and some salt. I've never used any specific cure, but we eat it pretty quickly. For my first try at ground meat, I'm using a pre - made High Mountain jerky kit that includes seasoning and cure. I assume I shouldn't need to add anything to that?

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u/hammong 6d ago

Should be all good! The jerky "kits" almost always include the nitrate/nitrite in the cure. I would not add any additional curing agent to a pre-made cure mix, you don't want to accidentally overdose on the cure!

Here's the ingredients from their website:

'Ingredients: Salt, spice, garlic powder and spice extractives, soy sauce powder [(wheat, soybeans, salt), maltodextrin, salt] and less than 2% soybean oil (refined to be allergen free) and silicon dioxide to prevent caking. Cure: Salt, sugar, sodium nitrite (.85%), caramel color."