I've been asked by the team to tell our story! Reason?
We don't want to end up as a faceless jerky brand:(
So here it goes!
It all started with some free fish.
Our fishing buddies dropped off some free Marlin to our restaurant in exchange for a free lunch.
Real Fact: Before we started crafting up fish jerky we had a "Hawaiian" food restaurant. Think Lau Lau, Poke, Lomi Salmon! All that kine good grindz.
Anyway, Kailua-Kona (where we live) is a huge fishing mecca. Folks fly here from all over the world to go fishing.
And locals fish to put food on the table.
So back to our friend bartering lunch for fish... He loved our food and we loved fresh fish but eventually, we had way too much of it.
What are we going to do?
Sun drying fish was a "thing" back then. It still is BUT unfortunately sun drying 100's of lbs of fish would take FOREVER. Plus the FDA would frown upon this method.
Here's what we did. When I say "we" it's actually Chris my dad who started this whole thing that turned into a "family" jerky business. I'm still in diapers when this all happened.
Since he was already kinda a chef, he created a secret sauce called Teriyaki. This was our first marinade and still is.
Sliced up the raw fish.
Let it soak up the umami flavors of the sauce.
Slow dried it in our dehydrators for half the day.
Then here comes award-winning fish jerky!
Nah, just kidding. It probably took him way longer to figure it out.
I'll get to the subtle annoyances of slicing fish in another post.
It's a whole topic in itself but for now, that's the short story.
More to come....
P.S - I will attempt to uniquely articulate the real life, day to day struggles of making Fish Jerky each week. As well as all the fun stuff that goes along with it!
Mahalos,
Sheldon - Kaimana Jerky
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