Meat for Home Made Beef Jerky

Smokey, salty, and just the right amount of sweet, beef jerky is a perfect snack for hiking, camping, and route-tripping. Learn how to make your own flavorful and tender beef jerky using either a dehydrator or an oven!

Making your own beef hasty at home is not only incredibly simple, but it is also much much cheaper than ownership store-bought jerky. Plus, you'll be able to control all the ingredients that go into making it; no weird stabilizers or unpronounceable additives.

And then if you're gear up to outset making your own beefiness jerky, you've come to the right place. In this article, we share everything we know about making tender homemade beef jerky.

Why We Love Information technology:

• Versatile hiking, camping, travel snack
• WAAY cheaper than ownership store-bought jerky
• Great fashion to make use of cheaper cuts of meat
• Lots of opportunities to develop your own customize flavors

Quick Tips for Making Beef Hasty

• Chewy = cut with the grain. Tender = against the grain.
• Partially freeze your beef earlier slicing it. Firm beef is much easier to cut.
• Tenderizing your beef with a mallet is definitely worth the effort
• Use a Ziploc handbag or reusable alternative for the marinade, which allows you to glaze each strip of beef by massaging the outside of the purse.
• Preheat your dehydrator, and dehydrate at 160 F to ensure beef remains at food-safe temperature.
• Set a timer! Beef hasty tin become over dehydrated if left in for as well long, so yous will want to pull information technology earlier 100% of the h2o has evaporated.

Eye of Round is one of our favorite cuts of beef for jerky

All-time Cuts of Meat for Beef Jerky

Any lean cut of beef volition work neat for making jerky. In fact, when you're selecting a cut for your jerky, the leaner the better.

The reason is that fatty doesn't dehydrate. Water moisture will evaporate out of the beef during the aridity process, but the fatty volition remain. And excessive amounts of fatty can lead to your jerky going rancid.

So while a nicely marbled ribeye steak might exist great for searing, all that intermuscular fat will be no good for making jerky.

By going with a lean cut of beefiness, you reduce the amount of fatty you need to cut out. Plus, these are often the cheaper cuts of meat!

These are our go-to cuts for making beef jerky:

• Top Round
• Centre of Round
• Superlative Sirloin
• London Broil

However, if you lot're looking for a really "primo" cut of beef to utilise for hasty, we'd suggest using flank steak. Information technology'southward by far the priciest option, but it has a really great flavour and can be cutting into long sparse strips.

What Do With Fat?

Nearly all cuts of beef come with some amount of fatty, but non all of it needs to be removed.

Yous will want to cut away whatever big caps of fatty gristle. This can exist accomplished by running your pocketknife underneath it, lifting up a tab of fat, and shaving abroad at a shallow angle with your knife.

You may besides discover some thin "veins" of intermuscular fat running through the meat. Whether y'all want to cutting these out is entirely up to yous.

If you are really trying to maximize storage life, you lot can go ahead and carefully cut these out. But if you're planning on eating in your jerky relatively shortly, it is fine to exit them. Nosotros only ever cut out the actually large line of fat and exit the residuum.

How to Cut the Beef

Later on you've selected the cut of beef, the side by side step is to decide which direction y'all desire to slice it.

In that location are two schools of thought on this:

• If you desire your jerky to exist chewy and then you lot will want to cut with the grain.
• If y'all want your hasty to tender, you will desire to cut confronting the grain.

Nosotros tend to favor slicing confronting the grain, but it'southward totally upward to you.

In terms of thickness, yous want to slice the beef as thin every bit yous can. Perhaps not paper-thin (which is kind of impossible with beef), but somewhere in the ⅛ to ¼ of an inch zone. If the hasty is too thick it will be harder to dehydrate and will end upwards existence much tougher to chew.

If you are ownership your meat from a butcher counter, the easiest way to slice your beef is to enquire the butcher to slice information technology for you!

This is unremarkably a free service, plus they have these amazing industrial meat slicing machines, so each piece will come out perfectly uniform.

No butcher around? No worries! Information technology's piece of cake to piece the beef with a pocketknife at home IF y'all follow this one trick!

To make the beef easier to slice, place it in the freezer for one-two hours beforehand or until it becomes semi-frozen. (not frozen similar a rock, merely firm) Beefiness is so much easier to slice when it's semi-frozen.

Also, it might seem obvious, but use a sharp knife! Dull knives crusade all sorts of kitchen accidents, and, in this detail example, makes cutting the beefiness absolutely excruciating. A recently sharpened knife will brand this process then much easier (and safer!) We ain this Chef Selection Model 15XV and it works great.

The Importance of Tenderizing

One of the most mutual complaints nigh beef jerky (whether bootleg or store-bought) is that it feels similar chewing tree bark. We get it, nobody wants to champ away on a beef-flavored woodchip. And then what'southward to be washed?

The first matter you can do is choose the correct direction to slice your beef, which we covered higher up. Against the grain = more than tender.

The adjacent thing is to make sure you properly tenderize your meat. There are two means to get nigh this: manually or with a pulverisation.

Pounding the beef with a meat tenderizing mallet will physically break down the muscle fibers, resulting in a more tender texture. While a piddling labor-intensive this method is very effective (sometimes a little too effective). Make sure not to over tenderize! The beefiness slices need to retain some structure! You lot don't want to pound them into mush. This method likewise has the added benefit of helping to ensure the slices are all pounded to an even thickness.

Meat tenderizing powders are made from enzymes. They are most usually derived either from papain, which comes from papayas, or from bromelain, which comes from pineapples. These can be sprinkled onto the beef and will start working to interruption down the fibers as soon as it gets placed into the dehydrator (activated by heat).

The other essential role of tenderizing is using a well-salted beef jerky marinade. Salt will naturally start to break downwardly the muscle fibers, yielding a more than tender jerky.

Beef Jerky Marinade

Just similar with BBQ sauces, the marinade is the secret X cistron in every beefiness jerky recipe. The exact ingredients and proportions are often highly coveted trade secrets.

Thankfully yous won't have to twist our arm to get our recipe (information technology's in the recipe card below!) Our recipe does a great job recreating that classic "original" jerky flavor, merely you can totally adjust the spices to make this recipe your own.

But call up non to add whatsoever fats/oils to your jerky marinade (lots of grilling marinades phone call for fats) if you plan on storing it for any length of fourth dimension.

Which is Amend: Oven or Dehydrator?

Yous can make succulent tasting beef hasty using either. However, you lot will get better and more consequent results if yous use a dehydrator.

Dehydrators offer much amend temperature control (especially at the lower temperatures needed for dehydrating) and they provide vastly better airflow.

We will requite instructions for both methods, but if you want to get serious near making hasty and so you will desire to consider picking up a dehydrator. They can be very affordable and have a ton of other great uses.

Equipment Spotlight: Dehydrators

If you're in the market for a dehydrator, we recommend buying i that has an adjustable temperature, which will permit y'all to punch in the drying temp to give you the best results for individual ingredients. The dehydrator we utilise and recommend most ofttimes is the COSORI Premium. You tin can detect our other favorite dehydrators here.

Beefiness jerky before and after dehydrating

How to Dehydrate Beef Jerky

To dehydrate your jerky, preheat your dehydrator to 160F. If you're using your oven, preheat to 160F or every bit low equally you can set information technology.

Load the trays, making sure no pieces of meat are overlapping, and so place them into the dehydrator or oven.

The drying fourth dimension will depend on how thick the beefiness was sliced, total load, humidity in your infinite, and your particular automobile–double check your dehydrator'southward transmission. We find that jerky unremarkably takes between 4-six hours. Every then often, use a paper towel to absorb any fatty, and shuffle or rotate the trays if needed to promote fifty-fifty drying.

Properly dried jerky should crevice when bent, but non interruption. Be sure to test using a cooled slice.

We personally similar to store our beef jerky in reusable mason jars which are airtight.

All-time Ways to Store Beef Jerky

How you store your beef hasty will often depend on when you intend on eating it. The longer you want to store it, the more specific the storing procedure needs to become.

Upwards to a week: Beef jerky volition exist fine for upwards to a week in a non-closed reusable or plastic baggie. The less exposure to air the better, and information technology's a good thought to keep out of directly calorie-free.

Upwardly to a month: You will desire to utilise an airtight container (Mason jar, resealable container with gasket lid). It can be stored at room temperature merely should be kept away from direct low-cal.

3-six months: For anything over a month, beef jerky should be vacuum-sealed in an airtight container. FoodSaver makes a diverseness of ways of vacuum-sealing food either in plastic pouches or reusable Mason jars. You will want to store it in the refrigerator.

Upward to a year: To maximize the storage fourth dimension of your beef jerky, yous will want to vacuum-seal it in an closed container and store it in the freezer. Y'all may as well consider using a moisture-arresting packet.

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• 2 pounds beef, (lean cuts are best & will keep longer)
• ¼ loving cup soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons worcestershire sauce
• ii tablespoons chocolate-brown sugar
• ii teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• i teaspoon smoked paprika
• i teaspoon blackness pepper
• one teaspoon meat tenderizer, *optional

Cook Fashion Prevent your screen from going dark

• Thinly slice the meat* and cut off all visible fat.

• Pound slices with a meat tenderizer mallet until pieces are uniform thickness (aprox nickel width).

• Place the beefiness strips in a zippo-top bag. Mix remaining ingredients and cascade over beef.

• Embrace & marinate for 12-36 hours. Shake the pocketbook a few times as it's marinating to make sure the beef is evenly coated.

• Spread the meat in a single layer, shaking off whatsoever excess marinade, on the dehydrator trays.

• Dry at 165F/74C for four-half-dozen hours, occasionally blotting off any fatty droplets that appear on the surface. Test using a cooled piece. Properly stale jerky, when bent, should crack but not break.

• Package hasty in and air-tight container or vacuum seal (*see storage notes beneath). Store in a cool, night & dry place.

*Partially freezing the meat makes it easier to slice. Cut with the grain for chewier jerky & cut against the grain for tender but more brittle pieces.

Storage Notes:
Properly stale and packaged jerky will keep for a week at room temp in a regular zip-height bag, up to a calendar month at room temp in an air-tight container, 3-six months in an air-tight container in the refrigerator, and up to a year if vacuum sealed and stored in the freezer.

Calories: 163 kcal | Carbohydrates: iv g | Protein: 28 g | Fat: iv k | Potassium: 395 mg

*Nutrition is an estimate based on information provided past a third-party nutrition calculator

This recipe was originally contributed by Kira and Brendon of Adventurehaks.com and was updated 11/21 with boosted information | Recipe adapted from Allrecipes.com

Fresh Off The Grid is a culinary resource for the outdoor community. Nosotros offering a drove of recipes, how-to guides, and army camp cooking gear to assistance yous enjoy great food in the great outdoors!

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Source: https://www.freshoffthegrid.com/simple-beef-jerky-recipe/

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