Go into any gas station or convenience store, and you’ll see the usual assortment of beef jerky. US$7 for four ounces, though? That’t about one third the current price of silver. Does making beef jerky really cost that much?
What’s really unusual is that you encounter a much broader, larger selection of beef jerky in poorer rural areas; its availability is proportional with the distance of the convenience store from a large city. Do ru’rl folks love beef jerky more than them big city people? Why are they willing to pay so much for it, anyhow?
Part of the answer is that you’re looking at gas station/convenience store prices. My beef jerky connection (a co-worker) brings our supply in from one of those discount places, Sam’s perhaps, at $2/4 oz. At Kroger it’s $3.50, IIRC.
When you dehydrate meat you end up with way less than what you started with. I made venison jerky from the loins and ended up with about 5 or 6 baggies of finished product, which was gone in a couple days.
Also…
It has been my experience that rural peoples have more experience with jerkies, due to hunters making thier own, and passing it around to friends/relatives. I haver a friend who prefers the Slim Jim style fattier sausage type jerkies, that his mom makes. I prefer a leaner spicy-sweet strip steak type jerky. And we buy jerky, when we buy it, to reflect our different preferences.
At the Amish stores hereabouts, I buy it by the pound–last time I got it (probably a year ago), I paid about $12/pound.
Not bad pricewise, and it’s mighty tasty stuff. I buy a pound each for the boys each Christmas, and I think it’s all gone by the next morning.
Also, in my personal experience, you need to use a cut that fairly lean and free of connective tissue to get the product in the commercial strips counter-side strips. A bit of fat isn’t nearly as much problem, and can be more savory, but increasing connective tissue can quickly make the problem almost unpalatably chewy. A hunter or Indian, seeking sustenance, would chomp away without hesitation, but a snacking suburbanite wouldn’t be very happy.
So why are jerky prices as low as they are? Many reasons:
Beef is graded by the entire carcass, not the specific piece;
higher USDA grades (select, choice, prime) contain progressively more distributed tissue fat (marbling), not less;
“dark beef” [dark maroon vs bright red] is fine to eat, but the darker the color, the lower the grade. You won’t see canning or utility grade in the refrigerator case, but you often get it in processed prducts like stews and jerkies;
older carcasses are downgraded because they are often tougher;
tenderizing meat with enzymes is cheap.
Well, you get the idea. USDA beef grading is heavily skewed towards the standards suited for home-cooked steaks. The finest steak houses age steaks by storing them in conditions you’d never use at home unless you knew what you were doing, because they invite spoilage (e.g. moldy patches are common, but are scraped/trimmed off), while the cheapest steak houses may simply tenderize grades of beef below those in your local steak house, but mighty tasty nonetheless, because “grade” doesn’t always equate with flavor, and a little spicing can ensure more uniformity.
Jerky can be made from dark beef your store never offers, even beef you’d never want to cook at home, though they’re quite wholesome - it’s the pricier aged cuts [still wholesome] that’d scare you. I haven’t priced those grades, but I’dbet the market rate was a lot less than supermarket steak, so even after a 75% weight loss from dehydration, and a smaller net market, they make a living.
If you like jerky you shoud try some pork cracklins, Tasso and boudin here in cajun land. Cracklins are not those lightly fluffed pork cracklins you get from frito-lay but something that looks like deep fried bacon. Tasso is similar to jerky but not dry and boudin well its a delicacy which is hard to describe.
Of course, you could get the Ron Popeil Dehydrator and do it yourself.
I was at a convenience store show, and even WHOLESALE, I still could not believe what it costs. Jerky is not as popular in Canada as it is in the US (Whole RACKS in AZ, last time I was there).
The small packages wholesaled for a dollar, and there wasn’t even a small handful.
Bottom line–it’s expensive because the market will bear that price.
If you look at the other concoctions on the counter of your local convenience store, you’ll notice that almost everything else is high-margin–the Lifesavers are essentially pure sugar, the sodas are mostly sugar and water, the snacks are mostly amalgamations of fat, salt, carbohydrates, and perhaps some sugar.
Beef jerky–if you insist on restocking at the local 7/11–is so expensive because it costs more to make than Slim Jims.
Keeping in mind the 75% loss to dehydration that **KP[/] mentioned, that 4 oz. package represents a pound of meat before the jerking process. So at $7/$5/$3.50/$2 a pound, the price isn’t as outlandish as it might first appear.
I bought a Ronco dehydrator. I love it. I guess that makes me a jerker. I use good quality meat, usually a few pounds of inside or outside round steak, marinate it, dehydrate, and make a pound or two at a time. The cost of making it at home is much lower, and the product is far better. May I suggest it?
It takes at least 3 lbs. of lean meat to make one lb. of jerky. 3 lbs. of beef at $3.00 a pound (total $9) will only make 1 lb. or less of jerky, thus the jerky will cost at least $9 for the finished product presuming you make it yourself. You must have a good Dehydrator if you plan on making it yourself. I have two Excelabar dehydrators and each one has 9 15 in. square shelves in it. I can make about 20 lbs. of meat at one time in them. I make a lot of jerky for my neighbor hunters in the fall. The cut of meat is not all that important as long as it is lean and free of all fat as it will all be the same when finished. I have made jerky out of venison, bear, elk, moose caribou, beef, turkey, racoon and God only knows what else.