Home › Steer Beef and Veal › Frizzled Jerky
Frizzled Jerky
Pour boiling water over jerky (dried or chipped beef), let it stand " 'arf a mo'," then drain and fry in butter till the edges curl or frizzle. Dish up hot and dash with red pepper.
Eggs are often stirred in, just before serving.
The word "jerky" is a Hobson-Jobson of the Spanish charqui-sun-dried meat. Originally it was pronounced along the Tex-Mex border, as it sounded, then for no logical reason Americanized as jerked beef. It is called chipped beef, too, from the chipping of thin slices off the hard sun-cured or dried beef. Somewhat similar to pemmican, it's a handy ration to carry on long hikes or horseback trips and is good to eat raw or cooked.
A camp-stove dish that survives in home kitchens as the savory half of creamed chipped beef. The whole technique is a soak, a drain, and a fast fry.
- "'arf a mo'"Half a moment, i.e. a very brief stand in the boiling water rather than a long soak. The point is to pull out surface salt and soften the fibers, not to cook or fully rehydrate.
- Which dried beef to buyJarred or deli-sliced dried beef, sliced paper thin, is what this wants. Modern snack jerky is thick, sugared and heavily smoked; it will not frizzle, it will simply toughen.
- SaltCommercial dried beef is very salty. Taste a piece after draining and give it a second boiling-water rinse if needed, and add no salt to the pan.
- The frizzleMedium-high heat, a generous knob of butter, and dry meat — blot it well after draining or it will steam. Two to three minutes is enough; the edges curling is the signal to stop.
- Red pepperCayenne, not sweet paprika and not black pepper. A dash means a pinch over the whole pan.
- Adding eggsBeat two or three eggs, pull the pan off high heat, and stir them through in the residual butter until barely set. Overcooked they weep against the salty beef.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities. A few ounces of dried beef with two or three eggs would make a small dish for two; without eggs, treat it as a garnish or a side rather than a main.