MAGIC MEAT

by Toponia Miller

Somewhere around thirty thousand feet my stomach growled. It had been a mad dash in slow traffic from our home in Sonoma to the chaotic Southwest terminal in Oakland with few edible enticements between ticketing and the gate. For the duration of my two-hour trip, surely I could resist the in-flight temptations of turkey wraps and tepid sushi.

But once aloft, the low-blood-sugar headache began to set in. As someone who thinks about food virtually nonstop and feeds others for a living, how can I forget to feed myself? Picky person that I am, I usually provision myself well for even a short jaunt and cursed my insistence on “traveling light” this time. My stomach growled aloud. Why had I brought only cooking magazines to peruse? Surely, I must have something I could eat. I shimmied my pack out from under the seat in front of me and rummaged through its contents: toiletries, miscellaneous chargers and cords, a notepad, and then, crammed into a zippered pocket, a half-eaten packet of beef jerky. Salvation!

How long had it quietly ridden with me through my daily routine, unnoticed? A month, maybe more, forgotten in a subcompartment after a trek through the coastal woodlands. Despite the passage of time and neglect, its scent was irresistible. I ripped off piece after piece and shoved them in my mouth. The salty, slightly smoky strips brought instant relief. Their texture, leathery yet yielding, was a marvel. My seatmates side-eyed me as I chewed loudly. No matter to me, they could stare all they liked. I was going to ride the protein high of this magic meat all the way to Albuquerque.

FALLING FOR JERKY

Love is a curious thing. I wasn’t always so hung up on jerky. In fact, I had quite a collection of jerky prejudices and looked down my upturned nose at the stuff. The convenience store bins of hermetically sealed sticks of mystery meat held no allure.

I had my first jerky encounter when I was twenty-two. I was cooking at a café during the daylight hours but often picked up catering work at night. After one of these marathon work binges I crawled into bed, too tired to be bothered with supper. When I awoke the next morning, there was a very pressing need for both caffeine and sustenance. While the pot of coffee was brewing, I rummaged in the fridge, finding only soggy lettuces, blackened avocado halves, and other forgotten relics from the farmers’ market. A three-day-old baguette could be weaponized more effortlessly than eaten.

Then I spied the bag that Taylor had left on the kitchen table for me. He had just started working at a local meat market. “You have to try the beef jerky we’re making,” he had told me days earlier. Considering my limited options and suppressing the priggish part of me that felt this was a nutritionally dicey breakfast, I poured myself a giant steaming mug of coffee topped with cream and dove into the greasy bag. To my surprise, I discovered that caffeine + beefy, salty, sweet protein = amazing. I ate it all and I wanted more.

I came to rely on that jerky as a quick pick-me-up when a meal was not in the cards. It was portable and could be conveniently consumed while running errands or dashing between jobs. I found it more satisfying than other snack foods. And unlike the pieces of fruit that were forever rotting in the innards of my purse, the jerky stayed well preserved for weeks.

We tend to think of jerky as a fairly ubiquitous American food, but the love of jerky knows no borders. When Taylor and I scraped together enough money to travel abroad, we realized that there was a whole world of jerky out there. In tiny butcher shops in Italy we found baskets of highly spiced pork jerky. On an island off the coast of Vietnam we saw strips of beef drying in the sun. Even in our own backyard we could sample Ethiopian quanta and Thai moo dat diow.

JERKY GENESIS

One morning, as I watched my dogs excitedly nosing a flattened, sun-parched fence lizard, I thought about how our ancestors, wandering the cradle of civilization, must have similarly stumbled upon dried-up critters and, like the toddlers of the human race, discerned them to be a reasonable foodstuff only after putting them in their mouths. Perhaps not delicious by today’s standards, they were at least edible. In this way, perhaps, the first primitive jerky was born.

The word jerky is a bastardized version of ch’arki, meaning simply “salted meat” in Quechua, the language spoken by the Incas, the indigenous peoples of the South American Andean highlands. But the Incas weren’t alone in their love of jerky. Many traditional cultures perfected drying salted meat in the hot sun or over a slow-burning fire as a means to preserve their kill. Learning to preserve protein for later consumption had a profound impact on human evolution.

It seems wherever humans went, jerky went with them. Long before we settled down into pastoral life, these rustic, thin strips of dried meat provided a portable, shelf-stable protein option for early nomadic cultures. Later, spices were added both for flavor and as an additional preservative. As people marched across the globe, their jerky picked up a little aromatic herb here and a spicy chile there. People learned to cook with jerky and other dried meats. Jerky became a handy kitchen staple that could be added to everything from salads to stir-fries and stews.

Sometime after the Industrial Age, things went awry for simple, nutritious jerky. Meat processing migrated from small farms and local abattoirs to large centralized facilities. These industrial meat-processing plants used by-products to produce a variety of snack meats loaded with chemical preservatives and sugars. These jerky-type products were pumped into the marketplace, often replacing traditionally dried meats. Dark days for jerky indeed.

A JERKY OF OUR OWN

In 2003, Taylor and I threw our hats in the ring and started up our little meat biz, The Fatted Calf. We knew jerky was a menu must. When we were developing our signature jerky, we wanted to create something distinct yet still simple and irresistible, and definitely more sophisticated than your average convenience-store offering. We wanted to be able to taste the meat—the high-quality, locally raised beef—and not a bunch of weird additives or trendy ingredients.

We began every week by slicing sheets of rosy-red beef. Good-quality sea salt and freshly ground black pepper were the only spices it needed. Molasses provided it with a rich, bitter sweetness, while bourbon added an elegant aroma and subtly tangy flavor. A little smoke from slowly burning fruitwood perfumed it and gave it a taste reminiscent of a good steak. It was the jerky of our dreams, and it became one of the most popular items at our two shops. Fresh from the dehydrator, slightly warm, and chewy-tender, it still makes me swoon.

WHOLE LOTTA JERKY LOVE

Love takes you to places you never thought you’d go. While our own jerky holds a special place in our hearts, we are total meat tramps. We’ll never forget our first mouthful of the Mexican specialty machaca. Who could resist the charms of a lemongrass-scented slice of Vietnamese thit bo kho? We’d happily cross an ocean for Spain’s tasajo. There is a lot of jerky to love.

Love beckons you to try something new. We can’t spend all of our time chasing jerky around the globe, so often we are at home in our kitchen trying our hand at Korean yukpo, drying duck breasts in our garage, or experimenting with amaro as a seasoning for pork jerky. We’ve built a life with jerky. There is meat in our refrigerator now awaiting its jerky transformation. A cookie jar of jerky sits on our counter, ready for a trip to the beach or to enjoy with a cocktail as a prelude to dinner. We rarely leave the house without a pouchful, and when we do travel, we often bring the gift of jerky with us.

When you truly love something, you can’t seem to shut up about it. You want to shout it from the rooftop. You want to spell its name in lights. Or better yet, write a book about it. This is our jerky love story.