Beef Jerky

Peggy

Hi. As you read this, I'm making River City Beef Jerky from GFW's web site to which I added a few variations of my own. It has been on the BGE since 9 a.m. Everything looks like it's coming along fine except that I'm having trouble keeping the temperature under 200. In order for me to keep the temp at 170 or so, I'm having to almost shut it down by closing the vent below completely and capping the top with the ceramic hat versus the daisy wheel. Here is my question: when do you use the ceramic hat versus the daisy wheel? Is the ceramic hat used for certain type of cooks? Thanks!

Car Wash Mike

Peggy, I cook alot of beef jerky. It may not help now but maybe next time. I partially fill the BGE up with lump and use an electric starter. After about 4-5 minutes I pull out the starter and add a little more lump. I put the jerky on when the temp is 100 and open lower and bottom vents 1/4 inch. It takes about 2 hours for the temp to get to 190. I turn or rotate the jerky every hour and seem to have the temp not rise above 210. I only cook my jerky about 8 hours though. Good luck and I never use the ceramic top for anything other than shutting down the heat completely.[p]CWM

sdbelt

Peggy,[p]I only use the ceramic cap to shut it down completely at the end of a cook. For jerky, depending on how hot it is outside, I either have the bottom vent barely open, and I mean barely, or completely closed.[p]Another thing I've done with better success for jerky, is to use my Redi-Check remote thermometer as the dome therm, so that I can monitor the dome temp in the house. I can keep the dome below 190 with these two things working together. I've found that opening the lid, to flip and rotate the meat really flares the fire up, so particularly after the first 1-2 openings, you have to move quickly, and shut down the vents even more than leading up to that first flip.[p]Good luck![p]--sdb