07-25-2009, 04:20 PM
while working on the recipes for the Jerky show, I really needed to experiment. There really isn't a cook book out there that I know of that tells you how to use Jerky as an ingrediant, although it is popular in South Africa. Therefore for my first experiment I thought I'd make a simple cream cheese spread.
Cream Cheese Spread Experiment.
First I decided to use a flavorful Jerky so I choose the House of Jerky's Teriyaki Beef Jerky. In order to use it as a spread you have to pulverize it or get it in as small of a bit size form as possible. Therefore, I tossed the entire bag of jerky into the food processor, the Jerky, not the bag itself. That's about 4 oz of Jerky.
I realized that there was a problem almost immediately since when I turned the food processor on the Jerky wasn't getting chopped up, in fact it looked liked the blades got stuck and weren't even spinning. So I removed the food processor's lid and discovered sure enough, the blades weren't spinning. Being the super genius that "I" am I quickly diagnosed the problem and removed the Jerky from the FP and then installed the blades, which were sitting on the shelf next to the FP. Once fitting the FP with the blades, re-stocking the FP with the Jerky, I started it up once again. Because of the texture of the Jerky, you have to really keep it on High for about 4 minutes, depending on the type of FP you have.
Once the Jerky was the size I wanted, I removed it from the FP, remembering to remove and then replace the blades, I was ready for step two.
Once I opened my beer and took a sip or two I was ready to proceed on to step 3.
I then took 8oz of cream cheese and tossed that in the blender and processed on low about 20 seconds was good enough, then added the jerky, 1tbl butter, 2 tbl mayo, 1 tbl lemon juice, 1tbl chives, freshly ground pepper to taste... Took a breath, a swig of beer and turned the processor on and mixed it up. It was pretty interesting taste, but let's see what Grillpup thinks of it, she dislikes most foods LOL...
Grillpup was pleasantly shocked by the new tastes, said it was good but needed to be harder. So I wrapped up the dip and figured I'd chill it a bit before taking it out in the public for a real test run. I so I tossed the bowl into the freezer and sat back to enjoy the rest of my beer.
kissing Jr dog and Grillpup goodby I set off to the New Grand in El Cajon to test my new taste. I ran into some of my good buddies there and we had a few drinks and the bartender passed the crackers and dip around.
Even with the short time (about an hour) the jerky was in this mixture it had started to reconstitute itself and blend with the dip (I'm thinking 24 hours in the fridge it would be perfect). Everyone loved the dip. We experimented with crackers, pretzels and celery. The result was, overall, the crackers worked best because the flavors of the dip were so good you didn't really want another over powering taste. However, there were some people that enjoyed the pretzels dipped in the dip and some that enjoyed the celery in the dip. Well, as in all cooking, cook to your taste!
Of course you could always add a little extra soy sauce or W Sauce to the mix, but if you really want to enjoy the flavors of the House of Jerky's Teriyaki Beef Jerky Cream Cheese dip, I'd follow this recipe.
Cream Cheese Spread Experiment.
First I decided to use a flavorful Jerky so I choose the House of Jerky's Teriyaki Beef Jerky. In order to use it as a spread you have to pulverize it or get it in as small of a bit size form as possible. Therefore, I tossed the entire bag of jerky into the food processor, the Jerky, not the bag itself. That's about 4 oz of Jerky.
I realized that there was a problem almost immediately since when I turned the food processor on the Jerky wasn't getting chopped up, in fact it looked liked the blades got stuck and weren't even spinning. So I removed the food processor's lid and discovered sure enough, the blades weren't spinning. Being the super genius that "I" am I quickly diagnosed the problem and removed the Jerky from the FP and then installed the blades, which were sitting on the shelf next to the FP. Once fitting the FP with the blades, re-stocking the FP with the Jerky, I started it up once again. Because of the texture of the Jerky, you have to really keep it on High for about 4 minutes, depending on the type of FP you have.
Once the Jerky was the size I wanted, I removed it from the FP, remembering to remove and then replace the blades, I was ready for step two.
Once I opened my beer and took a sip or two I was ready to proceed on to step 3.
I then took 8oz of cream cheese and tossed that in the blender and processed on low about 20 seconds was good enough, then added the jerky, 1tbl butter, 2 tbl mayo, 1 tbl lemon juice, 1tbl chives, freshly ground pepper to taste... Took a breath, a swig of beer and turned the processor on and mixed it up. It was pretty interesting taste, but let's see what Grillpup thinks of it, she dislikes most foods LOL...
Grillpup was pleasantly shocked by the new tastes, said it was good but needed to be harder. So I wrapped up the dip and figured I'd chill it a bit before taking it out in the public for a real test run. I so I tossed the bowl into the freezer and sat back to enjoy the rest of my beer.
kissing Jr dog and Grillpup goodby I set off to the New Grand in El Cajon to test my new taste. I ran into some of my good buddies there and we had a few drinks and the bartender passed the crackers and dip around.
Even with the short time (about an hour) the jerky was in this mixture it had started to reconstitute itself and blend with the dip (I'm thinking 24 hours in the fridge it would be perfect). Everyone loved the dip. We experimented with crackers, pretzels and celery. The result was, overall, the crackers worked best because the flavors of the dip were so good you didn't really want another over powering taste. However, there were some people that enjoyed the pretzels dipped in the dip and some that enjoyed the celery in the dip. Well, as in all cooking, cook to your taste!
Of course you could always add a little extra soy sauce or W Sauce to the mix, but if you really want to enjoy the flavors of the House of Jerky's Teriyaki Beef Jerky Cream Cheese dip, I'd follow this recipe.