Weston Manual Support Beef Jerky Slicer, Quick and Easy Operation For Cuts Up To 5” Wide x 1.25” Thick, Durable Aluminum Construction, Stainless Steel Blades, Charcoal Gray (07-3801-W-A)

I bought this jerky slicer after reading a lot of reviews. I recently started making both beef and pork jerky after watching a Meat Church video on making jerky. The inexpensive pork top loins from Costco seemed to be a good starting point since a failure would result in under $20 waste of ingredients. YouTube consumed a lot of my time so I could get a decent first batch. Trimming and slicing the meat was quite laborious with the partial freezing of the meat then trimming fat and slicing 1/8" or ¼" portions of the meat with lots of variation and inconsistent results. Still, it was fun.After about six batches of jerky, I noticed in some of the YouTube videos that folks were "cheating" the slicing process by using this apparatus to get consistent thickness of their jerky slices. I was not sold so kept watching more videos and then after my most recent jerky batch, I had such variation in quality of slices that I decided to go through reviews on Amazon.Lots of positive reviews and some negative reviews helped me take the risk of ordering the unit. Negative things that I was concerned about:- Meat getting stuck in the slicer- Super sharp blades that might compromise the integrity of your skin- Challenges cleaning the blades after usePositive comments that made me take the risk:- Consistency of slices- Quickness of slicing the meat- Ease of use- Slice without having to partially freeze the meatYesterday was my inaugural use of the slicer. I crosscut 5 pounds of eye of round in approximately 1" slices in a matter of 5 minutes, then ran each of those slices through the jerky slicer in about 10 minutes. It is amazing how quick and easy that was.My observations regarding the negative and positive points in previous reviews:- The slicer is super easy to use, and the non-frozen meat sliced fast.- When meat got stuck, I simply reversed the crank a partial turn then cranked normally, and the meat went through just fine without continuing to be stuck.- The slices were all the same thickness (bonus for dehydration times)- The blades are scary sharp. As an older person, my skin cuts very easily so I am hyper aware of sharp things. I came close a few times to cutting myself while cleaning the blades, but that awareness kept me out of trouble. Hopefully when I become more comfortable with the slicer, I will not forget to pay attention or there will be human blood in the sink 😊- Cleaning the body of the slicer is a piece of cake. Cleaning the blades is scary. Why Weston did not include a cleaning brush puzzles me.I highly recommend this slicer if you make jerky in any volume. It is a time saver and adds some consistency that adds to the appeal of the finished product.

It comes requiring assembly, which is fairly straightforward following the instructions and you'll get used to it, since proper cleaning requires disassembly after use. The manual repeatedly warns of the sharpness of the blades and they are indeed extremely thin razor-like discs on two shafts that could easily cut someone badly if mishandled. I did end up buying NoCry Level 5 Cut Resistant Gloves here on Amazon, just as a safety measure for the future.Once assembled, it works brilliantly. Using top round steaks ~3/4" thick and cut to a max of 5" wide, the steaks went through the slicer like butter - just a light turn of the handle and it practically fell through the slicer onto a plate below in nicely uniform thickness slices. It took only a couple of minutes to slice up 6 lbs of steak. Cleaning it took about 15 minutes, on the other hand, due to the need for disassembly and being extra cautious with the blades (both to not cut myself or to damage the blades).

Meat needs to be slightly frozen and at 1” or LESS thickVery very sharp

The media could not be loaded. Works great takes steaks in really good. The twin blades that turn into each other makes nice cuts. Also the left and right combs are labeled on the comb and unit ,you cannot get them confused. Really nice product with a name Weston you can trust.

Makes short work of pounds of meat. Only complaint is blades had big burrs on them.

I love smoking meat and always wanted to smoke jerky.I used to use the dehydrator, but smoking definitely is superior.When you smoke with a large smoker you need a lot of product.It’s wasteful if you’re only putting a pound of meat in so when I smoke jerky I’d like to smoke 5 to 10 pounds at a time with my large smoker. Kind of difficult to do if everything has to be done by hand. I saw this jerky cutter and decided to give it a try and man does it work.It’s simple it’s easy easy to clean.You gotta watch out its very sharp. You can cut a finger off with this thing if you’re not careful but the blades are enclosed inside, so unless you’re the kind of person that has to go poking around where your fingers shouldn’t be, you’ll be fine.All I can say is this machine has allowed me to cut up 8 to 10 pounds of meat to make jerky in minutes some thing that would literally have taken a day to do before. I love this.

Actually really disappointed with this. There is too much play between the blade discs causing them to spread apart from each other while slicing and then you get an accordion piece of meat that you then have to slice manually with a knife to make it usable. The main reason I figured out why it does it is because I bought a slicer of a different brand, and it actually had a spring in each side of the blades, forcing them together so they won't separate while slicing, and it works flawlessly!! I filed for an exchange and the new one arrived yesterday. I will probably just go ahead and send it back too since it's going to have the same exact issue. Weston should copy what the competition does and make the blades spring loaded to eliminate the issue that myself, as well as many many others are having. If they do that, their ratings will soar! Til then, I'll be using my other slicer. Hopefully they will upgrade their design in the future

It does exactly what I need it to do, and it does it splendidly! Do know that it will require a bit of patience and a careful read of the instructions; it's a little fiddly to assemble. However, this slicer made a jerky batch take twenty minutes to slice when normally it would take a couple of hours, and the even, uniform slices dehydrated perfectly. *The blades are SHARP.* Do please use caution in cleaning them.