I’m thinking about getting into making my own brand a beef jerky. I have never made jerky before.
My son and I both love beef jerky and we both love to cook. So I figured this would be a good bonding activity for us to get into.
To start, I have a couple of questions:
I’m prepared to spend money on this venture, so what kind of hardware do I need to buy? Does a dehydrator work better than an oven? What kind of slicer do I need?
What is the best cut of beef to use for making beef jerky?
I have wanted to make my own too - and would use a high-end beef, but I’m reluctant, because I lack experience. (posting mainly to subscribe…)
You don’t need any special equipment to make basic jerky. I wouldn’t even worry about the slicing. Get the butcher to do it for you. Even the supermarket meat department will do custom jerky cuts if you ask. I have always used beef flank steak to make jerky and it is ideal for it because it is so low in fat. DO NOT use any meat that is high in fat for jerky. It is nasty. It is sometimes prepackaged in cuts that are already ideal for jerky so look for those first.
Marinate overnight in whatever you want to put in it. Soy sauce is a common base. Add garlic, maybe just a little sugar, hot sauces, or chopped hot peppers at your discretion.
Here is one full recipe:
In a big bowl, mix together:
2 c. soy sauce (I used lite soy sauce and the jerky still tasted awesome)
1/2 c. liquid smoke (hickory)
1/3 c. worcestershire
1 c. brown sugar (could prolly reduce this if you wanted)
1 T garlic powder
1 T onion powder
1 T crushed red pepper
1 T black pepper
Line your oven in foil if you don’t want to make a big mess (you can cook it straight on the racks if you don’t care) and turn it on the lowest setting. Put the jerky on the foil spaced apart. Prop the door of the oven open just a little to keep the heat down and release the moisture. The interior temperature of the oven needs to be less than 150 F. Leave it alone for 8 - 10 hours or until the jerky is truly ready. Don’t eat it all while it is still making.
Even homemade jerky isn’t cheap. A full oven batch with all store-bought ingredients always costs me about $30 and never lasts more than a day no matter how much I make but it is worth it.
Don’t use a high end cut of beef. First, your just wasting money. Second, the texture just doesn’t come out right. It tends to crumble and fall apart rather than be pleasantly chewy.
I usually use cheap and flavorful flank steak. Cut it thin and across the grain to get something nicely textured. Cut it thicker or with the grain and get something suitable for replacing the brake pads on your car.
ETA - My recipe is pretty much the same as Shag’s but I usually use molasses instead of brown sugar and some crushed chipotles in adobo sauce.
If you want to try something a bit different I suggest you look for biltong recipes with Google. It’s an old style of meat preservation from South Africa. The predominate flavors are corriander and black pepper. You can even find instructions for making a drying cabinet using a cardboard box and low wattage light bulb. Regardless of the recipe you decide upon, if you decide you want to purchase a dehydrator (I have one and use it frequently) I suggest you not purchase one of the budget countertop models (ala Ronco.) Rather up your price a bit and look at something like the Excaliber.
Oh, and I usually buy a whole top round. Once you trim off the large flap of fat, you have some pretty lean pieces that slice nicely. General rule of thumb is that you’ll get one-third the dry weight as you have wet meat.
As far as slicers are concerned the one I have is called a butchers knife.
I use the cheapest round steak I can find because it’s so lean. Any visible fat left on the meat will be really gross after it’s made into jerky. I found flank steak to be a nuisance to trim the fat off of, and round steak is always cheaper out here. To slice the meat thinly enough, partially freeze it first and make sure your knife is very sharp; cut across the grain. I put the slices on smaller racks set in pans and put it in the oven on the lowest temp. setting with the door ajar part of the time as described above.
I use a mixture of soy sauce and worcestershire, to taste, with added spices, no liquid smoke, but that’s personal preference. Other nice marinades are lime-chili-tequila or teriyaki.
I make mine with Cabela’s Jerky Gun, using ground lean bottom round and commercial seasoning packets. You get nice, uniform sticks, and the flavor is throughout the jerky. I dry it in the oven, on baking racks.
To bring in a different method, I use eye of round as it has virtually no fat on it. I also use a dehydrator and a slicer.
I’ve also made the ground beef kind.
Both kinds have been really good, but the recipe for the ground beef one came out too salty so I had to cut it down some.
This is just one of the many things I want to do again after I get rid of these damn braces.
How about smoking your beef jerky? It would be some more work, but if you want your brand of jerky to stand out, and want a nice bonding activity, that would do it.
There’s a place in a town called Brevort in the upper peninsula of Michigan that makes the best smoked fish and beef jerky I’ve ever tasted anywhere, and they slow-smoke it in big smokers for like 6 hours. Unbelievably good. It was a traditional stop on the way when I used to go camping a lot in my single kid-free days.
I made my own venison jerky a couple years ago by slow-smoking for 5 or 6 hours and it turned out fantastic.
For equipment, just get a wood smoker (new for $50-100 or you could probably get a used one cheap on Craigslist). Then use hardwood (hickory is good for beef) and watch the temp-- low and slow.
Ron would have you try turkey jerky.
Most people who smoke jerky for the first time way overdo it. For starting out, I’d use a “Little Chief” or similar product and only run one pan of chips for an hour or less. The remaining time I would just use the smoker as an easy heat source.
The hardest thing to attain in good jerky is texture, for that reason I do things a little different. My main goal is to pull out as much water as possible with a minimum of heat. Too much heat will end up cooking the meat and ruining the texture.
I start with the brine. I only use dry ingredients in the brine. The base for the brine is 3 parts brown sugar to 1 part canning/pickling salt. After that you can add anything you want as long as it’s dry, the goal is to maximize osmosis and leave a very dense meat.
Depending on the thickness of the cut I will brine up to 24 hours. 95% of texture is formed now. You can’t make up for it later with more smoke, heat, or longer drying.
After the brining I will generally rinse the meat for just a second under cold water to remove the salty sweet syrup that has formed from the meat juice and the brine. After the rinse I put the meat on racks in the refrigerator and let them sit until the meat is dry to the touch. You are now 99% complete; the rest is the easy part.
Because the majority of the water has already been pulled out of the meat my goals with the final drying are; to finish the meat off, kill potential bacteria, and minimizing actual cooking. I accomplish this by using higher heat with some smoke for a very short time and then removing the smoke and bringing the heat down to low for the remaining time.
One of my most painful lessons in jerky making was - cut across the grain. I know it’s been mentioned here a couple of times but it’s definitely not something you want to forget.
I’m going to have to try another batch with the sitchensis method though - that sounds interesting.
I just made my second batch of jerky the other week and it turned out superp. I did use a smoker and used as sitchensis chief smoker, I used the big chief and didnt load it up very much. They say those things can handle 50 pounds of product, maybe if you just want a bunch of stuff with somke flavour and then cook it but with jerky there is no way you can get that in there. Anyway a couple things I found out. I tried some that I pounded out and some that I just put in, do not pound it out, or if you use a roundsteak as needscofee suggested (excellent idea) just pund it very gently. The ones that I thought were too think ended up being the choice pieces. I would say anywhere from half to even a whole centemeter can work.
I used Alton Browns recipe (google it yourself) minus the liquid smoke since I was using a smoker. It called for a 1 to 1 amount of worchestire and soy sauce. I had it marinating longer than it called for but I even rinsed it off a bit and still found it a bit salty. I like salt…alot, I eat the salt out of the bottom of bags of pretzels, so take that as you will. I am thinking about using a low sodium soy next time, or diluting it a bit. Either way I still think I would marinate for 48 hours and then rinse, just take them out of the vessel and give them a pass through running water, dont go too hard.
I used two pans of chips I think with a mix of mesquite and cherry, one would have been fine, or one and a half. I am new to smoking but I kinda think the “this type of wood for this type of meat” crap is just that, BS do what you like. Ok, alder to me has a strong flavour, but that is a big choice for fish so maybe it is just me.
I can go on and on but I should sum up. I do reccomend using a smoker, but error on the side of low chips. The absolute bane of all jerky makers is salt, it is really hard to get the right balance. Do not ever forget to add some sweet, use honey if you can, it is just better than sugar.
Oh yeah…teryaki style jerky is for heathens. You can go far east style but teryaki sauce is for people that want to taste teryaki, not meat.
Note that cuts of beef prices vary around the country; where I live now (Northern Midwest), “cheap” and “flank steak” do not go together. When I can find it (rarely) it’s one of the most expensive cuts out there, easily $8 or $9/pound.