Good Morning, Egon:
It is quite simple actually. I use
Hi Mountain mix, we like the mesquite the best but I experiment with other flavors too.
As far as drying and the production, I am still searching. I used to do muscle jerky, lot of work and gone fast, but my friend inspired me and now I grind the meat and mix it, let it sit and dry it in the oven.
I should have a smoker, but that's future.
Now to shape the jerky, this year I experimented with good old rolling pin. You roll the mix flat on aluminum foil covered cookie sheet, cut strips in it with pizza cutter and dry it in the oven say 200 - 220F for two hours. It helps to flip the piece every so often to speedup the drying; the pizza cutter will not actually separate the meat, just create breaking lines for dried jerky.
Yesterday I tried to form jerky with sausage stuffer on my KitchenAid mixer. It disposes link of meat again on a cookie sheet covered with aluminum and the oven drying is the same. That works fairly well, it is a bit of PITA to get the meat link line up on the sheet, but it works well enough.
I don't have a jerky gun, but that's probably the best way to lay down this mix. Jerky gun and some drying racks for the oven and I will be all set.
Now when I was doing muscle jerky, I hung it from skewers from the oven rack, the great advantage was it was drying larger quantities at once.