I love making jerky, but usually I use slices of whole meat. The few times that I've made jerky using ground meat, it's always been disappointing (almost inedibly tough - the texture of rawhide dog chews).

I saw some soy jerky in a Health Food store not long ago, and it got me thinking that combining tvp with extra lean ground beef might make a good jerky.

So, today I decided to experiment, and it turned out great. Tender and tasty, although maybe a little too tender. I think next time I would reduce the ratio of tvp to beef. I used about eqal volume of beef and rehydrated tvp.

I seasoned with soy sauce, garlic, barbecue salt, Splenda and garlic-chili paste.

I chilled the mixture and then used a tortilla press and waxed paper to smoosh small balls of the mixture into flat discs about 1/8" thick, and put them on my dehydrator trays.


Unfortunately, I didn't measure any of the seasonings, so I'll have to work on that for future batches.

When hubby tried the new jerky, he said "good, but I like your regular jerky" better (my regular jerky is made from whole meat - and I agree, it's a whole lot better).

He told me the texture was off, and I agreed. We decided that the texture reminded us of wafer-thin, crispy, chewy oatmeal cookies (the ones sometimes called lace cookies).

So, now we're calling them "meat cookies."


I like them (the cat loves them) and hubby can't decide if he likes them or not (after his second 4 inch "cookie," I'd say he likes them).

As a low-carb snack, I'd say they were a success, but the recipe needs tweaking.