Right now the plan seems sorta stupid.
Needed to run some things to Castle Rock, CO (from Austin) and get back in just over 48 hours for a meeting at noon today.
Anyone who’s had the pleasure of making that drive understands that it offers about 4 hours of decent scenery (with sparse fishable water immediately accessible) paired with about 10 hours of absolute geographical tedium. One way.
Just thinking about it makes my eyes glaze over. Again.
Rolled back up at the hacienda in the wee hours this morning with the mile count just under 2000 with about 44 hours elapsed on the clock since departure.
Damn, I’m getting too old for this if no serious fishing is involved.
On the other hand, the open road holds prodigious appeal. There’s plenty of time for planning, pondering and shrewd scheming.
It’s always good (make that exceptional) to get away from the manic crowds of town and city to appreciate some wide open spaces and sweeping vistas. (There might not be much unobstructed open space along the CO front range, but there’s still plenty in northern NM.)
Traditional road trip food in our world has been in the past what certain family members would call pedestrian. Energy drinks, various 
pseudo-meat products (long rule the Slim Jim) and the occasional fast food burger.
And no road trip can be executed without at least one bag of Cheetos.
For the past several years we’ve added an almost perfect road trip food to our larder – home-made Teriyaki Beef Jerky.
Being a skinflint at heart the home jerky experiments started when the price of decent commercially made jerky approached that of silver bullion.
Both jerky and silver have continued to climb in price since then, and I’d argue that really good jerky is probably more valuable and would be infinitely more bartarable than silver when / if anarchy rules.
Along the way a jerky master friend in Bozeman convinced us to spring for a genuine food dryer and it’s made all the difference. (Four years ago the best buy on the market was a dryer from Cabellas – we’ve used the hell out of it and can handle 12 to 15 pounds of meat at a time without a problem.)
Teriyaki Jerky is still our traditional road trip staple, though it’s a piece of cake to add just about any flavoring you can imagine to a jerky marinade.
Here’s our tried and true recipe that will easily cover 5 to 6 pounds of meat; the fresh ingredients add immensely to the final taste – don’t substitute.
6 cloves garlic
3 thumb sized pieces of fresh ginger
6 scallions, white and green parts, trimmed and rough sliced
1 and 1/2 cups tamari or soy sauce
1 and 1/2 cups mirin
3/4 cup sake
3/4 firmly packed brown sugar
Throw the garlic, ginger and scallions into your trusty food processor and chop fine but don’t process to a paste. Add the soy sauce, mirin, sake and brown sugar and pulse a few times to mix.
That’s it. Marinate your sliced meat (this does work pretty well with turkey too) per your routine, though in our book we like the deeper flavor for beef jerky if it’s in the marinade for at least 8 hours.
You’ll be the new king of the road when you bring this on your next road trip.
Enjoy.
Tags: Friday Feast
{ 1 comment }
So what meat are you using for your jerky?