Painted wings and giant rings

I decided I wanted to try making turkey jerky for the first time, so I looked up some recipes. A lot of them called for marinating overnight, and I didn’t want to wait that long. Then I found this recipe and decided to give it a shot. The final product was quite good, though it didn’t taste like Thanksgiving to me since I used a few different spices.

I also couldn’t find whole turkey breasts at the grocery store — they just had tenders and tenderloins. The latter seemed big enough, though not ideal, so I picked out a little over 3 lbs’ worth.

First, slice the turkey as thinly as possible (for me and my knife skills, anyway) against the grain:

Sprinkle spices on each side. I used Penzey’s Lemon Pepper Seasoning: salt, black pepper, citric acid, lemon peel, garlic, and onion.

Skewer the pieces with enough spacing such that they will hang off the oven rack like so:

A little over 3 lbs of turkey tenderloin filled a single oven rack with a little turkey left over that was too small to cut easily (that became tomorrow’s dinner).

9 hours at 200º with the oven door propped open about 1″ using a special tool:

And they were done!

I’m happy with how they came out. The flavors of the spices are not overwhelming, but enough to make it interesting. The texture is quite crunchy, but my guess is they would not last long if they still had enough moisture to be chewy, without preservatives. I would definitely make this again and maybe experiment with different spices.