Fiber Optic Light Beef Jerky Recipes

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

Making your own beef jerky at home is not only incredibly simple, simply information technology is likewise much much cheaper than buying 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 so if you're ready to get-go making your ain beef jerky, you've come to the right place. In this commodity, we share everything nosotros know about making tender bootleg beef jerky.

Why We Love It:

• Versatile hiking, camping, travel snack
• WAAY cheaper than buying store-bought jerky
• Smashing way to brand use of cheaper cuts of meat
• Lots of opportunities to develop your own customize flavors

Quick Tips for Making Beef Hasty

• Chewy = cutting with the grain. Tender = against the grain.
• Partially freeze your beef before slicing it. Firm beef is much easier to cutting.
• Tenderizing your beef with a mallet is definitely worth the effort
• Apply a Ziploc bag or reusable alternative for the marinade, which allows you to coat each strip of beef by massaging the outside of the bag.
• Preheat your dehydrator, and dehydrate at 160 F to ensure beef remains at food-rubber temperature.
• Set a timer! Beefiness jerky can get over dehydrated if left in for also long, so y'all will want to pull information technology before 100% of the water has evaporated.

Heart of Round is i of our favorite cuts of beef for jerky

Best Cuts of Meat for Beefiness Jerky

Whatever lean cut of beef will work not bad for making jerky. In fact, when you're selecting a cut for your jerky, the leaner the better.

The reason is that fat doesn't dehydrate. Water moisture will evaporate out of the beef during the dehydration procedure, but the fatty volition remain. And excessive amounts of fat can atomic number 82 to your jerky going rancid.

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

Past going with a lean cut of beefiness, you reduce the amount of fat yous 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
• Eye of Round
• Summit Sirloin
• London Broil

However, if you lot're looking for a really "primo" cut of beefiness to use for jerky, we'd suggest using flank steak. It's by far the priciest option, simply information technology has a really great flavor and can be cut into long sparse strips.

What Do With Fat?

Nearly all cuts of beef come up with some amount of fatty, but not all of it needs to be removed.

Y'all will want to cut away any large caps of fatty gristle. This can be accomplished by running your pocketknife underneath it, lifting up a tab of fat, and shaving away at a shallow angle with your knife.

Yous may also notice some thin "veins" of intermuscular fatty running through the meat. Whether you want to cutting these out is entirely up to you.

If you are actually trying to maximize storage life, y'all tin can get alee and carefully cut these out. But if yous're planning on eating in your jerky relatively before long, information technology is fine to get out them. Nosotros just ever cut out the really big line of fat and exit the rest.

How to Cut the Beef

Later on y'all've selected the cut of beef, the next pace is to decide which direction y'all want to slice it.

At that place are two schools of idea on this:

• If you want your jerky to be chewy then you will want to cut with the grain.
• If you lot desire your jerky to tender, you volition desire to cut against the grain.

We tend to favor slicing confronting the grain, simply information technology's totally up to y'all.

In terms of thickness, you want to piece the beef as sparse as you lot can. Perhaps non cardboard (which is kind of impossible with beefiness), only somewhere in the ⅛ to ¼ of an inch zone. If the hasty is too thick information technology will be harder to dehydrate and will terminate up existence much tougher to chew.

If y'all are buying your meat from a butcher counter, the easiest fashion to slice your beef is to ask the butcher to slice it for you!

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

No butcher around? No worries! Information technology'southward easy to piece the beef with a knife at home IF y'all follow this one play tricks!

To brand the beef easier to slice, place information technology in the freezer for 1-2 hours beforehand or until it becomes semi-frozen. (not frozen like a rock, but house) Beef is and then much easier to slice when it's semi-frozen.

Likewise, it might seem obvious, but use a abrupt pocketknife! Boring knives cause all sorts of kitchen accidents, and, in this particular case, makes cutting the beefiness absolutely excruciating. A recently sharpened knife will make this process then much easier (and safer!) We own this Chef Choice Model 15XV and it works dandy.

The Importance of Tenderizing

One of the most common complaints about beefiness jerky (whether bootleg or store-bought) is that it feels like chewing tree bark. Nosotros get it, nobody wants to champ away on a beef-flavored woodchip. So what's to be done?

The kickoff thing you can exercise is choose the right management to slice your beef, which nosotros covered above. Against the grain = more tender.

The next thing is to make sure you properly tenderize your meat. There are two means to go nigh this: manually or with a powder.

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

Meat tenderizing powders are fabricated from enzymes. They are most commonly derived either from papain, which comes from papayas, or from bromelain, which comes from pineapples. These tin can exist sprinkled onto the beefiness and will start working to break downwardly the fibers as soon as it gets placed into the dehydrator (activated by heat).

The other essential function of tenderizing is using a well-salted beefiness jerky marinade. Salt volition naturally showtime to break down the muscle fibers, yielding a more tender jerky.

Beefiness Jerky Marinade

Just like with BBQ sauces, the marinade is the undercover X factor in every beef hasty recipe. The verbal ingredients and proportions are oftentimes highly coveted trade secrets.

Thankfully y'all won't take to twist our arm to get our recipe (information technology'southward in the recipe card below!) Our recipe does a great chore recreating that classic "original" jerky flavor, merely y'all tin totally conform the spices to brand this recipe your own.

Just remember not to add any fats/oils to your jerky marinade (lots of grilling marinades call for fats) if you program on storing it for any length of fourth dimension.

Which is Better: Oven or Dehydrator?

You can brand delicious tasting beefiness jerky using either. However, y'all will get better and more than consistent results if you use a dehydrator.

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

Nosotros will give instructions for both methods, merely if you lot desire to go serious near making jerky so you will want to consider picking up a dehydrator. They can exist very affordable and accept a ton of other smashing uses.

Equipment Spotlight: Dehydrators

If you're in the marketplace for a dehydrator, nosotros recommend ownership 1 that has an adjustable temperature, which will allow you to dial in the drying temp to give you the best results for individual ingredients. The dehydrator we use and recommend almost often is the COSORI Premium. You tin detect our other favorite dehydrators here.

Beef hasty before and after dehydrating

How to Dehydrate Beefiness Jerky

To dehydrate your jerky, preheat your dehydrator to 160F. If you're using your oven, preheat to 160F or as depression every bit y'all tin can set it.

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

The drying time will depend on how thick the beef was sliced, total load, humidity in your infinite, and your detail machine–double check your dehydrator'southward manual. Nosotros find that hasty unremarkably takes between 4-vi hours. Every and so often, use a paper towel to blot any fat, and shuffle or rotate the trays if needed to promote even drying.

Properly dried jerky should crack when aptitude, only not break. Exist sure to test using a cooled piece.

Nosotros personally similar to shop our beefiness hasty in reusable mason jars which are airtight.

All-time Ways to Shop Beef Hasty

How you store your beefiness jerky will often depend on when y'all intend on eating information technology. The longer yous desire to shop it, the more specific the storing procedure needs to become.

Up to a week: Beef jerky will be fine for upwardly to a week in a non-airtight reusable or plastic baggie. The less exposure to air the better, and it's a good idea to keep out of direct low-cal.

Upward to a month: You will desire to use an airtight container (Mason jar, resealable container with gasket lid). It tin can exist stored at room temperature only should be kept abroad from direct low-cal.

iii-6 months: For anything over a month, beef jerky should be vacuum-sealed in an closed container. FoodSaver makes a diversity of ways of vacuum-sealing food either in plastic pouches or reusable Bricklayer jars. You will want to store it in the refrigerator.

Up to a year: To maximize the storage time of your beef jerky, y'all will desire to vacuum-seal it in an airtight container and shop information technology in the freezer. You may also consider using a moisture-absorbing packet.

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• two pounds beef, (lean cuts are all-time & will keep longer)
• ¼ cup soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons worcestershire sauce
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• two teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon garlic pulverisation
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1 teaspoon blackness pepper
• ane teaspoon meat tenderizer, *optional

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• 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 zip-height pocketbook. Mix remaining ingredients and pour over beef.

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

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

• Dry at 165F/74C for 4-6 hours, occasionally blotting off whatsoever fatty droplets that announced on the surface. Test using a cooled piece. Properly dried jerky, when bent, should crack but not break.

• Package jerky in and air-tight container or vacuum seal (*run across storage notes below). Store in a absurd, dark & dry out identify.

*Partially freezing the meat makes information technology easier to slice. Cutting with the grain for chewier jerky & cutting confronting the grain for tender but more than brittle pieces.

Storage Notes:
Properly dried and packaged jerky volition go on for a week at room temp in a regular zero-top bag, up to a month at room temp in an air-tight container, three-6 months in an air-tight container in the fridge, and up to a twelvemonth if vacuum sealed and stored in the freezer.

Calories: 163 kcal | Carbohydrates: 4 1000 | Protein: 28 one thousand | Fat: 4 one thousand | Potassium: 395 mg

*Nutrition is an gauge based on information provided past a 3rd-party nutrition reckoner

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

Fresh Off The Grid is a culinary resources for the outdoor community. We offering a collection of recipes, how-to guides, and camp cooking gear to help you enjoy dandy nutrient in the peachy outdoors!

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