Making a batch of homemade beef jerky

[Faulkner]

My youngest son, who's in college, came home Friday evening and said, "hey Dad, we've not made a batch of beef jerky in a while. How about we make a batch this weekend?"

The boys used to help me whenever I'd work up a batch when they were younger, but it has been a year or so since I made any venison or beef jerky. So we made a run to town pick up some fresh meat, and then we spent Saturday afternoon working up a batch of homemade beef jerky using my super secret jerky dry rub cure recipe that I've developed by trial and error over several years about 15 or so years ago. It took the meat from at least 3 cows getting the jerky cure recipe right.

We use top grain eye of round, trim off any fat and put it in the freezer for about 10 minutes before we start to make it easier to slice. I already have my slicer adjusted to just the right thickness for jerky, then we slice, season with my secret cure, stack the slices in a glass bowl, cover, and then let cure overnight in the fridge. It'll go on the dehydrator first thing in the morning.

 

[shouldazagged]

That's making me drool like Ditrina's Italian food pictures.

 

[richardw]

Thank you for driving me crazy. I love homemade jerky but have never made it even though I do a lot of cooking. heck, I even have a steel WOk that I bought over 40 years ago. Has to be more than a thousand meals were cooked in it. So Inthink I have to learn to make jerky

 

[rwsmith]

That's dang good....

When I saw the title, the first thing I thought was, "What about the SEASONING?!" You mentioned that your dry rub was 'secret' but what can you tell us about it so we can develop our own?

PS: Does the dehydrator 'cook' it all all? Is heat involved? Can you do it in an oven?

 

[JohnRippert]

I have only made jerky once. It was before I made a trip to Colorado to go camping and hiking by myself back around 2000. The recipe and instructions actually came out of a science fiction series I was reading back in those days. Yours looks good even before drying.

 

[MCorps0311]

Okay now tell me how good it tasted. lol

 

[Faulkner]

When I saw the title, the first thing I thought was, "What about the SEASONING?!" You mentioned that your dry rub was 'secret' but what can you tell us about it so we can develop our own?

PS: Does the dehydrator 'cook' it all all? Is heat involved? Can you do it in an oven?

If you've never made jerky a recipe book is a good place to start. I started out using store bought jerky cures which range from not too bad to really good. I then bought a couple of recipe books for jerky cures and tried a number of those, both wet and dry cures. I've used a few wet cures that were pretty good but I tend to prefer dry cures.

I like my jerky to have a hickory smoked flavor with a little bit of spice kick, but not too hot. So I started experimenting with both beef and venison. Venison is actually better than beef for jerky because it has less fat. I've skinned out a several whitetail deer that I used 100% of the meat for jerky . . . and that's a lot of jerky! Along with beef and venison I've made jerky from turkey breast (my favorite), rabbit, quail, dove, and bacon jerky. I've also dehydrated sliced bananas, strawberries, peaches, and apples. Sliced apples dipped in lemon juice then dehydrated are awesome.

Supposedly you can make jerky in the oven or a smoker, but I've always used a dehydrator. I have two dehydrators and I prefer the ones without fans because the ones with fans work too fast and you can easily dry out the jerky too much. Once you prepare your meat and let cure for at least 12 hours and up to 24 hours, I place it on the dehydrator for another 12 to 18 hours. A dehydrator's heating element and vents simultaneously work to remove moisture from food so it does not really "cook" it. A dehydrator's heating element warms the food causing its moisture to be released from its interior. Through convection the warm, moist air flows out via the air vents.

 

[Ivan the Butcher]

Back when I had lots of kids at home, we made a batch every other month. I started with a fanless dehydrator, but the 15 to 20 pound batches took way too long to cure. I went to units with fans, they come with 4 trays and buy 2 extra! I ended up with 2 units and 12 trays total. The units lasted 3 to 5 years of hard use! (We started with a Ron Popel dehydrator [Christmas Gift] but it finally melted down and ruined whatever we were drying at the time. It lasted 3 or 4 years.)

We always did a wet marinade, with 50% liquid smoke (I don't think I would do that any more & I can't find Liquid smoke by the gallon any more!) soy sauce, garlic and onion powders, cayenne pepper and molasses and some sugar (I think I would use honey now!) Trim, slice and soak from over night to two days. Place on trays but not touching, place on drying unit and rotate trays every 12 hours. As is dries it will shrink, and can be consolidated. When you have a number of free trays you can clean them and start another batch or go back to drying fruits and vegetables.

In a normal year we dehydrated stuff non-stop from late April (early berries) to November (late apples). Jerky was mostly a winter project, except we had to have a fresh batch for the big Labor day camp out!

Ivan

 

[dave holl]

Faulkner,

I noticed that you sliced WITH the grain. Does the shape of the piece of meat dictate the direction?
I've made tons of beef and venison jerky too, and seem to think the finished product is a bit tenderer sliced ACROSS the grain.

After years of successes and a few failures, I've concluded that jerky is seasoned dried meat, and how you slice it is borderline irrelevant.
Lemon pepper and soy sauce are worth a try also.
Dave

 

[Faulkner]

Faulkner,

I noticed that you sliced WITH the grain. Does the shape of the piece of meat dictate the direction?
I've made tons of beef and venison jerky too, and seem to think the finished product is a bit tenderer sliced ACROSS the grain.

After years of successes and a few failures, I've concluded that jerky is seasoned dried meat, and how you slice it is borderline irrelevant.
Lemon pepper and soy sauce are worth a try also.
Dave

Interesting, I've never made jerky across the grain . . . I just checked in my old recipe books they all advise to cut with the grain but I don't know that I have a reason why.

 

[JohnRippert]

When I made that one batch of mine I had the butcher cut the meat cross grain. I figured it would be like fajitas, easier to eat that way. Worked fine.

 

[LostintheOzone]

I'm going to get around to making some beef jerky, maybe this summer if I have time.

I have a dehydrator that I use to smoke salmon so I'm already set up. I've thought about smoking jerky but that's a pretty labor intensive operation the way I do it. I use a very old Brinkman smoker that requires lots of monitoring. I use the dehydrator to take some moister out of the salmon before it goes into the smoker.

I've heard that one can make jerky in an oven but our's only goes down to 170° and I know that will cook it which isn't what the process is about.

Thanks for posting that as I now know how to do this. Not much different than smoking, cheaper and probably easier.

 

[Ray1970]

Been quite. Few years since I felt ambitious enough to make jerky. Always enjoyed the finished product but I never liked the work involved to get there. I keep telling the guys at work that I'm going to make a batch and bring some in. Just haven't gotten around to getting it done lately.

Hopefully this post inspires me to make a trip to the store for some meat and seasonings.

 

[Faulkner]

Alright! The jerky meat has been on the dehydrator for about 11 hours and we're starting to take some of it off. The test samples are pretty dad-gum good.

After I let them cool for a few minutes I trim off any fat that I missed during the slicing process then cut them into smaller pieces and bag 'em.

 

[chaparrito]

Looks great. I use eye of round too but slice it cross-grain. I've done it both ways and find that cross grain is more tender. When I was a boy scout in phoenix I made it on the roof of the house. Laid it out on racks set into sheet pans, poked toothpicks into the meat here and there to make a tent out of the triple cheese cloth I covered it with to keep the flies off. It got done in a day and a half.

 

[bill2000]

Agree cross grain should be the way to go. Just the way london broil should be sliced. Works best with leaner, less tender cuts of meat of any kind.

That jerky looks delicious!

 

[Kanewpadle]

When I was a kid my father built a cabin out in the middle of nowhere up in Alaska. Took us an hour and a half to get there by river boat.

We had all the comforts of home. Cabin, outhouse, smoke house, solar panels etc....

He took a bear one year and decided to make jerky. Bear meat is tough but makes great jerky. Don't know what his recipe was but guess who's job it was to smoke the meat?

 

[Kanewpadle]

Alright! The jerky meat has been on the dehydrator for about 11 hours and we're starting to take some of it off. The test samples are pretty dad-gum good.

After I let them cool for a few minutes I trim off any fat that I missed during the slicing process then cut them into smaller pieces and bag 'em.

Now all you need is packaging and marketing.

 

[Kanewpadle]

So because there are no preservatives, which is a good thing, how long does your jerky last? Does it go bad or no?

 

[LostintheOzone]

Looks great. I use eye of round too but slice it cross-grain. I've done it both ways and find that cross grain is more tender. When I was a boy scout in phoenix I made it on the roof of the house. Laid it out on racks set into sheet pans, poked toothpicks into the meat here and there to make a tent out of the triple cheese cloth I covered it with to keep the flies off. It got done in a day and a half.

That works. I lived on the AZ border as a kid and our neighbor who raised cattle made jerky that way. He rolled it in black pepper and something else, no sure what it was, and hung it on a clothes line for about a week. He waited for the hottest days of summer (90's) to do it. He always brought us a big bag of jerky for helping him butcher his cattle. I believe his mom was native American.