I’ve been very busy this last week so I didn’t get the chance to post very much. The pond development is moving forward rapidly, but the rainy season is upon us, and this makes work much more difficult (and muddy). At work, things are crazy with a bunch of new people, and several high level position changes at the company. But enough of the excuses…

I figured I’d post a quick note on an attempt at making chicken jerky now. Praew bought a food dehydrator at the BaanLaeSuan Fair (a Thai home&garden magazine which literally means “Home and Garden” in Thai). Yesterday she tried making dried tomatoes and grapes. They were delicious. (The dried grapes, which don’t look anything like raisins for some reason, are going into scones tomorrow.)

So at the supermarket today, I thought, “what about making turkey jerky?” Well, turkey is pretty hard to find here in Thailand, but high quality chicken breast is easy. So I bought a fairly small pack and figured I’d give it a try.

Initially, I followed the instructions here:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Chicken-Jerky/

It takes about 6 hours to dehydrate, so it will be another 4 hours or so before I can take it out.

A quick Google search about how to make sure it is safe led me to this paper by a University of Wisconsin food scientist. It is mostly consistent with the above instructible but adds an additional step at the end of dehydration where they heat the jerky in the oven for 10 minutes at 275F (140C) to make sure all the pathogens are killed. This seems easy enough.

If I’m lucky, I’ll have chicken jerky in about 4 hours. Although then it will be about 1AM and I’ll be sleeping. I’ll figure out something…