It was the day our first batch of customer-ready jerky was finished. I had hardly slept the night before out of excitement. James and Kiddo met me at the kitchen so we could package it up together.
A couple of hours before the jerky should have been finished, we snuck some pieces from the oven. They didn’t seem as dry as they should have been. How strange. The possibilities raced through my mind. Did we miss a step? Did we need to open some more windows for better air flow? Was the air today extra humid?
Also, the jerky tasted spicy. Maybe the air was extra humid AND the garlic was extra spicy. It could happen, I rationalized!
I reread the recipe. James reread his notes. After some investigation, we figured out what happened. Some of the ingredients were accidentally tripled in the marinade. Tripling the honey meant that the jerky didn’t dry properly. Tripling the garlic and ginger meant that the jerky was spicy. Tripling some things but not other things meant that the flavors weren’t properly balanced. What a mess.
How can two engineers spend months meticulously refining and documenting a process, only to botch the recipe on the day it actually mattered? Mistakes happen.
We nailed the second attempt.