Thread: Hare jerky?

From a Chef's point of view, Jerky is Jerky, whatever the meat and most commercial brands, have a good dose of MSG along with the salt, sugar and other flavourings.

Regarding the potential for disease and parasites etc, all wild meat is potentially carrying something, in fact they all do, but our digestive systems, deal with all but the most nasty, of the possible bad bugs.

The process of making Jerky means that the initial salt (and sugar) is present in such concentrations, that nasties are killed right then, when the meat is further dried, the lack of water kills what ever may be left.

So in my view, a hunter's inspection of what he's just killed, check liver, check colour, check for rotting, etc, will be enough to ensure that the meat (deer/goat/rabbit/moose) is OK to eat. I can't see why Hare would be any different.

And I quite like a young possum too, older ones can be a bit strong Possums eat all the good bits in the bush.

It is worth remembering that Bacon is just salted pork (belly cut) from when they used to put a pig in a barrel and fillet it up with brine, on the sailing ships of old. They didn't put Nitrates and Nitrites in it until fairly recently. Before then, Bacon was pale, not pink.