Is There A Difference Between Kippered Beef And Beef Jerky?

Beef jerky is a fairly easy snack to come by at any gas station convenience store for good reason. It's easy to hold, and you can just pull them out of the bag and nosh on them during a road trip. Once in a while, you may come by a slightly different breed of beef strips, called kippered beef. The word "kipper" tends to be associated with fish, specifically kippered herring. This fish style is made by cutting open the filet then salting and smoking it to preserve it. Folks often refer to smoked herring as "kippers" when they're discussing the canned fish product that pops up in pantries. If you used the same method to kipper beef, would that just be making beef jerky?

While kippered beef is very real, the two aren't quite the same. Texture-wise, kippered beef is not nearly as dry or chewy as beef jerky. Much like kippered herring, you can make kippered beef by salting, smoking, and seasoning beef. The end result is still very tender and there's still plenty of the meat's natural juices flowing inside. Meanwhile, standard beef jerky is thin, trimmed beef which is fully dehydrated. Jerky tends to be very chewy and much easier to eat by hand because it won't be leaking any moisture. Kippered beef is less common than beef jerky, although you can still find it for sale under names such as Jack Link's slow-cooked beef steak.

It helps to think of kippered beef as being closer to a portable, cured steak, rather than a stick of jerky. Kippered beef tends to be cut thick, but it's often made with less fatty meats, ranging from lightly fatty chuck roast to fairly lean flank steak or beef knuckle. Jerky is a somewhat similar game, but with absolutely no room for fat. The best cuts of meat for top-tier beef jerky are extremely lean cuts with little fat, such as top round. The fat has to be properly trimmed because fat doesn't dehydrate well, and skipping this step is a common mistake when preparing beef jerky.

The biggest difference between the two may be storing them. Both beef jerky and kippered beef are prepared using old, historical methods for preserving meat. However, beef jerky is so dehydrated that it hardly ever needs to be refrigerated, unless it has a high amount of moisture than normal. This is because most harmful bacteria strains grow inside of water, and drying out the beef removes that channel for bacteria to spoil the food. Kippered beef, while still preserved, usually needs to be kept in the fridge because it hasn't been fully dried out. The cold temperatures will keep bacteria from growing in the kippered beef's juices instead.