Beef jerky

Potassium sorbate may also be used in meat and poultry food products under USDA regulations (156,157). The USDA regulations allow its use only to retard mold growth in sausage, including beef jerky, when appHed from a 10% water solution to casings before or after stuffing. 

Beef jerky is traditionally produced by maintaining strips of beef in a brine solution and then drying the strips to reduce the moisture content to a water protein ratio below 0.75 to 1.0. Emulsifier base smoke flavourings are added to brines to produce a smoke flavoured jerky. 

Calicioglu, M., Sofos, J.N., and Kendall, P.A. 2003b. Fate of acid-adapted and nonadapted Escherichia coli 0157 H7 inoculated post-drying on beef jerky treated with marinades before drying. Food Microbiology 20 169-177. 

Porto-Pett ACS, Call JE, Luchansky JB (2008) Validation of commercial process for inactivation of Escherichia coli 0157H7, Salmonella Typhimurium, and Listeria monocytogenes ion the surface of whole muscle beef jerky. J Food Prot 71(5) 918-926 Quintavalla S, Vicini L (2002) Antimicrobial food packaging in meat industry. Meat Sd 62 373-380... 

Beef jerky (or other product containing sodium nitrite)... 

Reyes-Cano etal. (1995) have described the process utilized in production of cecina—an IM meat product that is widely produced and consumed in Mexico. Fresh lean beef from the hindquarter is sliced parallel to the direction of the muscle fibers in long strips at a thickness of about 5 mm and immersed in a 15% salt solution at a ratio of 1 2 meat to solution for 4 hr. The meat then can be dried by oven drying at 50°C for 1 hr or sun dried for several days. Still another procedure adds salt to the thinly sliced meat and folds the meat over the salt until curing is complete. The final product has an a of about 0.85 and is similar in composition to beef jerky (Reyes-Cano et al, 1994). The final pH is about 5.4 to 5.5 (Reyes-Cano et al, 1995). 

A particular brand of beef jerky contains 0.0552% sodium nitrite by mass and is sold in an 8.00 oz bag. What mass of sodium does the sodium nitrite contribute to sodium content of the bag of beef jerky ... 

Snack foods include a vast array of food items ranging from cereal-based crackers and com chips to high-protein snacks such as beef sticks and jerky. In past years, smoking of snack foods was limited primarily to meat snacks, as other snack foods were difficult to handle in the traditional smokehouse. With the development of natural smoke flavourings, snack food manufacturers can now incorporate these flavourings into a variety of products to produce smoked, barbecued, roasted or grilled flavours. 

Ashbrook (1955) also has described production of jerky (beef or venison), which was cured in a hot brine and smoked over a low burning fire. Production of dried beef was also described by Ashbrook (1955), which is cured in a brine with a high-sugar content, followed by draining and smoking. A similar product was produced from dried salted mutton by Zapata et al. (1990). 

---