Beef Jerky.
So....We have had many meat adventures (More on that later). By far the easiest set it and forget it thing that I have ever made has been Beef jerky. Before I begin on the how to I want to first say that my wife and I enjoy beef jerky from time to time. It is great on road trips. We like the chewy salt spicy kind, organic if we can get it and preferably something with a kick. With all that in mind finding good quality beef jerky is hard to find. When you do find it is off the chart expensive. It doesn't really make sense. It is sooooooo cheap to make. Personally I believe the cost is in the craptastic preservatives/chemicals they use to keep it "Fresh".
Again I am sure we are doing something "wrong" so true jerk-heads will probably have "issues" with this. I believe that this produced far superior jerky than I have ever tasted EVER. Different strokes for different folks I suppose.
This is what we did:
Step one
Get some meat! The leaner the meat the better. If you can help it find meat with no fat or very little. When you buy said meat it will probably be from the local grocer. Grocery store cow is what I used but if your pockets are deep you can choose to go to an actual butcher. Have the butcher trim off all the fat. Matter of fact you can have them do step two for you as well.....Richie Rich!
Step two
Take your meat out of its wrapping. Throw that thing in the freezer. I would give it a couple of hours. You don't want your meat frozen but you want it stiff. This stiffness makes it easy to cut into thin strips. Sometimes good grocery stores or butchers sell trimmings or beef strips for stir fry. This is PERFECT for making jerky. You will most definitely have to trim the fat. The reason for trimming the fat is simple. It goes rancid in the drying process. The slices should be less than 1/4" thick and long-ish. You can purchase a nice 2 pound steak for five bucks this will yield about one 1/2 pound of jerky.
Step three
Create a seasoning for your meat. So there are different schools of thought with this. One school is DRY RUB. I failed out of the dry rub school. I believe that it is reserved for dry aging for long periods of time or for my one and only secret BBQ recipe (more on that later). The second school of thought is marinade. I got an A+ in marinade. We made two flavors of jerky. The first was a soy sauce sesame seed brown sugar recipe.
for 1 pound of meat
Mix:
- 1 cup of soy sauce
- 1/4 cup of brown sugar
- 1 table spoons of ginger
- 1 table spoon of garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon of liquid smoke (I used hickory)
- 1 teaspoon of sesame seeds
The other version we made was a coffee and red pepper flake version
- 1/2 cup of soy sauce
- 1 cup of STRONG coffee (we used Bustelo)
- 1 table spoons of ginger
- 1 table spoon of garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon of liquid smoke (I used hickory)
- 1/2 table spoon of red pepper flakes (or more)
- 1 teaspoon of white pepper
- 1 table spoon of organic hot sauce
Step four
I used a tupperware container but you can get creative with a ziploc or platter or bowl or whatever. You just need to submerge your meat in the marinade. Usually the longer you marinade the better. If you leave the meat in the marinade for more that four hours the jerky will be too salty to eat. Watch the clock. The ingredients are not that expensive but I HATE wasting food. Eating super salty beef jerky is kind of like mouth torture.
Step five
Break out old trusty. The trick the the dehydrator is leaving space between the pieces. Do not over lap or touch pieces. This will ensure that everything will get dried. Take the meat out of the marinade and pat it dry. The dryer the meat the faster it will dehydrate. Place the meat evenly on the racks. The meat is going to shrink by more than fifty percent. This is normal. Pro-tip: I would lay down paper towels under the racks while I was laying down the meat. Mostly, because I did not want to wipe out the base of the dehydrator at the end.
Step six
Wait. I waited almost 48 hours with our first batch to ensure that is was "safe". This was way too long. I would say that between 5 - 8 hours per pound is enough. The dehydrator is really just a slow cooker. So if you think that you would cook a 5 pound roast for like 8 hours a small thin 1 pound portion of meat shouldn't take that long.
Step seven
Enjoy your spoils. We went through jerky phase and made like 20 pound of jerky in a week. By the next week it was gone. My wife made me stop. It is like meat crack. I bought a middle of the road vacuum sealer and some food grade dry gel packs and started giving them away.
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