Make jerky / cure meat?

[Cor Blimey]

Can you?

Most of the weight in fresh meat comes from water content (fresh muscle meat is about 75% water content, cooked about 60-70%). Making jerky or curing the meat (air dried or salt preserved, either) would be awesome to preserve meat and reduce weight, at the cost of time/preparation and additional need to make extra water when eating (higher salt proportion / no water in the food)

[Bomoo]

Not yet. Hopefully there's curing racks at some point.

[lill]

not all of the meat is useable for jerky lets say if u try that u loose 50% from the bear meat.
if u do this then u got form 8kg bear meat 1kg jerky wich has the equivalent calories from 4kg bear meat.
if u prepare a long distance travel it is worth but not for hanging around a base.

smoke preparation should also implemented.
smoked meat and jerky shouldnt degrade that fast

[Cor Blimey]

Originally posted by lill:

not all of the meat is useable for jerky lets say if u try that u loose 50% from the bear meat.
if u do this then u got form 8kg bear meat 1kg jerky wich has the equivalent calories from 4kg bear meat.
if u prepare a long distance travel it is worth but not for hanging around a base.

smoke preparation should also implemented.
smoked meat and jerky shouldnt degrade that fast

good ideas - it should certianly not be 1:1 calorie ratio

[cT917]

I think this is a great idea! As a guy who makes his own jerky with a dehydrator at home I'd love to see it in TLD. I've read into homemade dehydrators for my own use and I think a good way to emulate it for TLD would be to require an indoor space with a wood stove heated to at least 30 degrees C then maintained over a period of 20+ hours (since that's how long it takes to dry typically) there's no real calorie loss to speak of but using fatty pieces will produce a jerky that spoils quickly so it would make sense to loose some calories in-game. The current cooking system in-game isn't setup to allow for this kind of food prep (although I've spent 15+hrs by the fire in game before) but it seems like the devs are looking to change the cooking system so maybe it'll make sense to add jerky then :D

[Pleadian]

With the amount of meat available in game, I wouldn't care if you lost most of the calorie count for the benefit of low weight snacks. I love this idea.

[cT917]

This board should probably be moved to the wishlist

[hinterland_community]

One requested before, but also an interesting idea. In particular the weight difference between "fresh" and dried meat would be something that would have to be looked at carefully. Would there be a way to justify the weight savings by making the "cost" of the meat high in terms of time at the fire?

[lill]

afaik it is a process of 8 days or more with 12 hours cold smoke at 40 deg. and 12 hours fresh air. wich makes the meat last for about a year. but u have to cure(curing? use salt) it before wich is another 3 day or longer process. otherwise the smoked meat would ruin while processing.

[cT917]

The method I use at home in real life is: marinade for 18-24 (for flavor and tenderness only) dry for 12-18hrs (depending on thickness and fat content) the dehydrator produces an up draft of hot air using a fan and heating coil and maintains constant temperature that (from what I've read) could be achieved with a wood stove or kerosene lantern placed under the suspended food. Without a fan for air movement this process takes longer closer to 30+ hrs for meats the resulting jerky lasts a few weeks to a month on my counter, a few months at colder temps before it starts to smell "gamey". We have a base of store bought jerky in game at a weight of .10kg I believe and 350 calories. What if we used that as a comparison? Maybe a 1kg piece of deer dried for 30hrs in a cabin with a wood stove produces 2 .10kg jerkys still at 350 (since we removed the fat) The only real part would be fitting the degradation into the current system. So maybe 4x slower than regular meat? And it's treated like processed food for storage? Edit: in game we would have to check the fire level and heat periodically (too cold slows the process too hot ruins it)
Edit edit: but yeah from what I understand I think lill is right "curing" meat takes much more time but the product last much MUCH longer

[Cor Blimey]

Originally posted by hinterland_community:

One requested before, but also an interesting idea. In particular the weight difference between "fresh" and dried meat would be something that would have to be looked at carefully. Would there be a way to justify the weight savings by making the "cost" of the meat high in terms of time at the fire?

My suggestion would be it requires a burning fire (to simulate smoke / gentle warmth to dry as I doubt subzero temparatures work well for that ;-)) for 12 hours but does not require you to be in a 'at the fire' animation. So you need to gather a lot of wood, stoke up a roaring fire then can drop a load of meat nearby and get your cured meat 12 hrs later.

In addition it would dehydrate you more than normal cooked meat when eaten, so also requiring you to melt more snow later on.

The point would be to allow lightweight long-life calories for travelling / camping / emergencies (mimicking e.g. salty crackers, or the current jerky item) at the cost of preparation time and additional water consumption - i.e. not replacing the benefits of fresh cooked meat for ordinary day to day consumption

If you can add a craftable 'smoking rack' item to place the meat on then even better :)

[lill]

making jerky like i did myself needs 12 hours at 95°C lasts 2 weeks maybe more but i eat it to fast.
other names to google for are biltong and borts look at biltong box.
i know that some nomads use cold to dry it but i did not know how long this takes.

[cT917]

I typically use about 1kg of meat for my home jerky (2-2.5lbs store bought rump roast) and I've stored my jerky in my car through (what I can admit is a mild never lower than -10 C) winter with no noticeable effect in taste or quality.

[cT917]

Originally posted by lill:

making jerky like i did myself needs 12 hours lasts 2 weeks maybe more but i eat it to fast.
other names to google for are biltong and borts look at biltong box.
i know that some nomads use cold to dry it but i did not know how long this takes.

This is perfect! It's exactly what I had in mind. I found it on Google under biltong box images came right up

[cT917]

All of them appear to use an electric light (heating element) and fan setup though just like my store bought dehydrator. Has anyone on the forums used one that used a more "long dark" heat source in one of the biltong boxes?

[cT917]

We could also make it so we have to hang the meat using fishing line perhaps using the resource similar to trap usage with a chance the line becomes ruined and unusable. Meat could be hung directly above a stove or fire place and left until it dries or spoils (depending on how well we kept up with our fire)

Edit: near the fire not above loriaws right above is cooking :P