Preparation time: 24+ hours
Cooking time: 3+ hours
Serves: 1-4
Learn to make delicious homemade jerky from young, free-range Hawaiian wild goat. This recipe covers the essential brining, marinating with a flavorful blend of Worcestershire, soy sauce, brown sugar, and garlic, and the smoking process to achieve lean, savory jerky. Perfect for outdoor enthusiasts, hunters, and those following a paleolithic diet.
This is a suitable meal for those on a paleolithic diet. :-D
After culling, immediately field-dress the goat. At a minimum, gut it and decapitate right where the head meets the neck to preserve as much neck meat as possible. I leave the hide on to protect the meat in transport out of the field.
Skin the goat at home in the evening to prevent flies from harassing you. Hang the goat over night wrapped in a breathable bed sheet. Let hang in cool shade for 24 hours and butcher next evening.
When butchering, cut prime leg meat, neck, and backstraps into thin strips no thicker than 1". Remove as much of the fat and connective tissue as possible. Luckily free-range goat meat is fairly lean as it is.
Put meat strips in a salt water brine for 12-24 hours. You can leave it in for a few days if the meat smells extra gamey.
After brining, squeeze brine water out of meat and put meat in marinade solution for another 6-24 hours.
After marinading, smoke the meat in a grill over charcoal and hickory chips for 5+ hours at 150F. Or if you are impatient at this point :-) you can smoke it at 200F for 2-3 hours.
Make sure to check the strips every so often and remove the thinner ones as they cook more quickly.
You can store the jerky in an air tight container for 5 days or you can refrigerate for 1 wk. or freeze for a month or more.