I combined some of the Malaysian recipe ingredients with Chinese cooking ingredients in this recipe to create the marinade. You can easily buy the few Chinese cooking ingredients (identified below) via the Internet at sites like Amazon®. And those ingredients are most useful in making a lot of different Oriental dishes, and not expensive given how many meals you get from using them as primary seasoning ingredients.
It is a lot of fun experimenting with new recipes, if the cook is experienced and also a good (hopefully better than good!) cook. The changed recipe I developed produces a combination of sweet and smoky flavors with a very small amount of heat (or more if you keep more of the marinade on the surface of the meat while it is dehydrating).
Note that there is no curing agent shown/used below in this recipe. That means the finished jerky must be kept refrigerated in sealed Ziploc® freezer bags (or in vacuum sealed bags) until it is used (stored for up to two weeks), and this should happen within a week once a bag is opened. This will avoid unwanted mold formation and bacterial contamination on the surface of the jerky. But, read on ...
You can decide to use Prague Powder #1 as a curing agent if you want to travel, with your jerky well sealed (vacuum sealing is best but Ziploc® freezer bags will work too) but not refrigerated. Curing agents like Prague Powder #1 can be purchased inexpensively via online sites like Amazon®. Using the combined weight of the marinade and the meat, use 1/2 teaspoon of Prague Powder #1 per pound of total weight (in this recipe assume 3 pounds of total weight, so use 1 1/2 teaspoons of Prague Powder #1 added as a marinade ingredient). You can then cure the sliced meat in the marinade for 24 hours as part of the marinating process, refrigerated and vacuum sealed or sealed [air expelled] in a one gallon Ziploc® freezer bag.
Now let's consider how to get mild, medium or intense jerky flavor. Put simply, it is a matter of how much marinade you retain on the surface of the meat before dehydrating. If you want mild yet yummy tasting jerky, scrape excess marinade from the meat slices on both sides after marinating, lightly with a table knife, on a wood cutting board. Or, and this is very important, don't scrape off any excess marinade, or else scrape marinade from only one side of the meat instead of both sides. Why? Answer: The amount of marinade that dries onto the surface of the meat when it is dehydrating determines the intensity of the flavor and the heat.
The remaining tasks after marinating the meat are to impale the slices of marinated meat with a few shish kabob spears, hang the slices so they slip through the rungs of the top oven rack, and then drying/dehydrating the meat in a 180 degrees F oven to turn it into jerky.
Cured vacuum sealed jerky will remain safe for a least a month, not refrigerated, but once the bag is opened the jerky should be eaten within a week. This is similar in utility to the commercial brands of jerky you find in convenience stores, bagged, with antioxidants, but not vacuum sealed and not refrigerated.
Moving on ...
I refer to the somewhat oval shaped cross cuts of pork loin in this recipe as discs. After marinating they relax and look more like wide strips, which you can leave as wide strips after marinating, or cut them in half lengthwise for thinner strips.
And now, the results! Superb! This is very delicious jerky ... and comparatively inexpensive compared to beef jerky, for suitable lean beef costs twice as much per pound as pork loin. But you can choose to use beef with this recipe instead of pork if you prefer. Also, you can have whatever flavor intensity you like simply by varying the amount of marinade you leave on the surface of the meat when you dehydrate it.
Finally, compare your costs for meat and marinade ingredients to make a pound of jerky, to what you pay buying jerky from virtually any source. You will find it hard to believe how much money you save by making the jerky ... and it is very easy to make excellent quality jerky. For example, two pounds of raw pork loin will yield one half pound to one pound of jerky due to the combination of adding marinade weight and losing combined marinade moisture and meat moisture weight. Buy pork jerky and it will cost anywhere from $1.25/ounce to $4.00/ounce ... or, $20/lb. to $64/lb. So ... if you pay even $3/lb. for the pork loin, and $3 for the marinade ingredients to process 10 lbs. of pork loin, and even lose 3/4 of the weight as moisture loss during dehydrating, then your total cost of $33 yields 40 (or more) ounces of pork jerky, which translates to less than 84 cents/ounce! Or, $13.20/lb. So, let's see ... what will you choose to do? Starting with 10 pounds of raw meat, your yield will be up to 80 ounces (5 pounds) if you dehydrate the marinated meat without removing any marinade.
Ingredients: (makes 18 or more discs/or 36 or more thinner slices of jerky)
2 lb. piece of pork loin (surface fat cut off and discarded, meat partially frozen, then cut into 1/4" thick discs, perpendicular to the direction of the grain [long muscle fibers])
2/3 cup of light soy sauce (Kimlan® brand)
2 tablespoons of oyster sauce (Lee Kum Kee® brand)
2 tablespoons of spicy chili crisp (Loganma® brand)
2 tablespoons of brown sugar
2 tablespoons of honey
2 tablespoons of toasted sesame oil
2 tablespoons of Wright's Liquid Smoke®
1/2 teaspoon of red food coloring
2 teaspoons of garlic powder
2 teaspoons of onion powder
2 teaspoons of black pepper
2 teaspoons of sea salt
Directions:
Trim all visible surface fat from the piece of pork loin, discard the fat, and place the loin in the freezer for an hour or two to partially freeze it.
While the meat is in the freezer, combine all of the marinade ingredients in a two quart bowl. Mix well.
Remove the meat from the freezer and slice it into 1/4" thick discs, perpendicular to the grain. Cutting the meat perpendicular to the grain will make it easier to chew later than typical jerky that is cut along the grain. Cut away and discard any residual areas of fat.
Add the sliced meat to the marinade in the bowl and mix well by hand (but if you used a curing agent in the marinade, then wear latex or nitrile gloves to keep it away from your skin). Note that the sodium nitrite in the curing agent, if you use it, can be absorbed through your skin, and you don't want that to happen as it is poisonous if too much is absorbed.
Transfer the meat and the marinade to a 10" by 16" vacuum seal bag (or to a one gallon size Ziploc® freezer bag).
Vacuum seal the marinating meat (or expel the air if you used a Ziploc® freezer bag and then seal it). Spread the meat out inside the bag and make it roughly flat to avoid uneven areas of thickness.
Marinate the meat for 24 hours in the refrigerator, laying the bag flat on a shelf, and turning the bag over every four hours. It is useful to squeeze and bend the bag a few times to guarantee that all slices of meat are evenly coated with the marinade, which won't happen if two pieces of meat are tight together before being coated with marinade.
Remove the meat from the refrigerator and (maybe, if you want mild jerky) scrape excess marinade from it one piece at a time on a wood cutting board with a table knife. I prefer to let all of the marinade remain on the meat surface as that yields the best, most intense flavor after dehydrating the meat.
Dry/dehydrate the meat to create jerky in a 180 degrees F convection oven (if you have one), with the discs hanging vertically from bamboo or steel shish kabob spears, not touching each other, on a high oven shelf, over an aluminum foil covered baking sheet on the low shelf that will catch any drippings from the meat. Note that you do not have to have a convection oven but the drying time will be considerably longer in a conventional oven, likely closer to 6 hours instead of 4 hours.
Hints: The discs/strips are each impaled 1/2" to 3/4" from one end and put on the spears with an inch of separation from each other. Once a full spear of meat slices is slipped through the rungs of the top oven shelf, a second spear (optional) may be used to impale the discs underneath the shelf, 1/2" or more as necessary from the bottom edge of each disc/strip of meat. That will keep the pieces of meat from touching each other as they dry and become jerky. Repeat this step until all of the marinated meat slices have been put on shish kabob spears and hung from the top oven shelf (in rows).
Note: You should crack a conventional oven door open about one inch to help eliminate moisture from the oven/drying meat. Use a wood utensil or something similar to keep the oven door propped slightly open. Convection ovens may not continue to heat if you partially open the oven door. In that instance the oven will typically exhaust the moisture via an internal exhaust fan with the oven door kept closed.
The jerky will probably be done in 4 hours using a convection oven, but allow as much time as needed, noting the jerky is finished when it bends and cracks at the surface, but does not break in half. Part of the time requirement is determined by how much marinade you left on the surface of the meat before dehydrating. Check the jerky after 3 hours of drying and every 30 minutes after that, if necessary, until it is finished. Simply hold one piece and bend it to see if it cracks at the surface. Don't be surprised if you cheat and cut off a small piece and taste it during the drying. It is delicious.
Once the dehydrating/drying is done, turn off the oven, then slide out the top shelf for easy access, and remove the (optional) bottom shish kabob spears from the rows of jerky.
Remove the top shish kabob spears holding the jerky from the oven, slide the jerky from the spears, and place the pieces of jerky next to each other, flat, on a large wood cutting board to cool.
Discard the aluminum foil and, if needed, wash the baking sheet. Also, wipe/clean the rung surfaces of the top oven rack to remove any marinade residue.
Cool the jerky to room temperature, then if you want you can cut each piece in two crossways, then store snack size amounts in three, quart size Ziploc® freezer bags or vacuum seal bags, seal them and refrigerate them until the jerky is used. If you used a curing agent and plan to travel with the jerky not refrigerated then do not cut the pieces in half before storing them.
If you used a curing agent then limit your daily portion of jerky to one ounce, as that will guarantee you will not consume too much sodium nitrite. If you didn't use a curing agent you can eat as much as you want.
Eat the jerky within two weeks unless you used a curing agent and want to keep it for a longer period of time. I bet the first bag of it will be gone the day you make it!
Enjoy!