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Costco sells a Korean BBQ Pork Jerky with the brand name Golden Island

It's delicious- it's soft but chewy, smokey, sesame-ey, moist with the sugars but obviously also dried enough to not need refrigeration.

I've tried making it myself with mixed results. The marinade is easy: ginger, sesame, brown sugar, etc. The flavor is good but my texture isn't quite right. I tried my normal jerky method which is to marinate and dehydrate. As you would expect, the sugars didn't caramelize correctly and the meat didn't take on the soft, chewy, candied texture that I crave.

The labeling and the texture imply that the meat is cooked. A Chinese pork "jerky" that I learned about from this question is only cooked. I want the meat to also be preserved so only roasting/grilling is insufficient.

There are several questions here:

Does this product represent a dish in Korean cuisine or is it a fusion variation? If I could find a name I could find a recipe.

How could I both cook and preserve my pork?
The options that come to mind are:

  • Smoking until dehydrated (requires much more effort as I think it would have to be a cool smoking over a long period of time)
  • Grilling briefly for flavor and then dehydrating until done. (does partially cooked meat still dehydrate?)

Is there some other method that I haven't thought of?

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    I don't know if it'd be related or not, but there's "Pork Fu", which is shelf-stable. It's described as "made by stewing pork in soy sauce and sugar until the collagen in the meat breaks down, and then pounding the meat until the fibers separate and drying the result in an oven; the difference is that the fu isn't pounded quite as much as sung, and consequently is more fiberous".
    – Joe
    Feb 25, 2016 at 18:05
  • Dehydration is cooking, just at a lower temperature than normal and with much more airflow. What temperature are you using when dehydrating the pork? While I have a lot of experience dehydrating beef and fruit, my experience with pork is more limited. Still, I would expect a lower temperature to make it softer.
    – user21524
    Mar 13, 2016 at 20:35
  • @Snowman- Not necessarily. You can dehydrate meat with cool air if it is dry enough. Modern dehydrators use heat to speed the process but I can do a cool dehydration or smoking if it would produce the result I want.
    – Sobachatina
    May 5, 2017 at 15:35
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    I don't have it with me, but the "Chinese" method for making jerky is quite different than the western style. It is definitely a moister, softer end-product. I'll dig up my Sunset cookbook where they talk about it, and post back later. I'm guessing that it has more to do method than ingredients. Korean BBQ marinade better have soy sauce as a (the) main ingredient as well as a lot of garlic, BTW, moreso than sesame, brown sugar or ginger (all of which are fine as ingredients).
    – PoloHoleSet
    Jul 20, 2017 at 16:51

2 Answers 2

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Does this product represent a dish in Korean cuisine or is it a fusion variation? If I could find a name I could find a recipe.

It does not appear to be a korean dish, rather a version of the chinese pork jerky, which has been seasoned with a korean bbq style.

How could I both cook and preserve my pork?

If you are trying to replicate the product, it doesn't appear to be a cooked and dried product. Unless you are trying to extend shelf life of your cooked meat.

The options that come to mind are:

Smoking until dehydrated (requires much more effort as I think it would have to be a cool smoking over a long period of time) Grilling briefly for flavor and then dehydrating until done. (does partially cooked meat still dehydrate?)

You could hot smoke the meat to be completely/partially cooked, before considering a preserving process.
Similarly grilling/broiling/roasting, before preserving. Of course you can dry/dehydrate most things that have water content.

Is there some other method that I haven't thought of?

If following the chinese jerky process I have seen, either:

  • Raw meat is cooked, then brined/marinated in a meat tumbler
  • Raw meat is brined/marinated, then cooked

You also need to consider whether you wish to have mince & reform the meat, or slice the meat thinly (eg meat slicer).

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I marinated the meat for 24 hours in the Korean No1 Marinate and I added more brown sugar sesame seed and 1/4 can of coke and sprinkle of salt when I put the meat on the dehydrator. The dehydrator is with the heater and fan. I still rotate the trays every hour. The meat stayed soft, chewy and very tasty.

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  • the meat? Please specify what part of the animal.
    – user34961
    Jul 20, 2017 at 8:26
  • I'm going to try this shortly. I'll bet all the extra sugar was enough to keep it soft during dehydration.
    – Sobachatina
    Feb 1, 2018 at 22:07

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