Makin' your own jerky...

Mongo

Mongo

Joined
Nov 5, 2001
Messages
8,969
Greetings all. I wasn't quite sure where to post this, but I figured there has to be a gadget of some sort for making homemade jerky. How do you do it? Do you use a food dehydrator? Recipes anyone? I love jerky, but it's too darn expensive to keep buying from the store. By the way, the best I've found so far is called "kippered beef steak nuggets" by Jack Link's. I find 'em at walmart for about $3 a 3.5 oz package. I figure I can buy a nice chunk of meat and somehow jerky it for a heck of a lot less than close to $12 a pound.
Help poor ol' Mongo please.
 
I've jerked meat.

Ok, Ok , enuf now....Can you read again?

I've gone to the butcher and had him slice beef ~ 1/8 inch. I asked him what he recommended as far as cut.
I have a multi tier electric dehydrator. with stackable racks Inexpensive from heartland or other liquidator.
I marinate the strips in
Soy Sauce
Worcestershire Sauce - Lea & Perrins
Teriyaki sauce
Dark Brown Sugar
tried Liquid Smoke but I didn't like the taste.
You can just get by with the first 3 ingredients.
Here's a site that has recipes

here
It only takes a day to dehydrate beef.Very economical and much tastier when you do it yourself. Doesn't last long tho. YUM :)
I've dried fruit also.
I like bananas, pineapples, apples best.
Grapes were a pain to do.
Tom
 
I'm in the same boat. Right now I'm on EBAY bidding on a dehydrator or two ;)

One of the guys at work brought in some Elk jerky and I was hooked. ~$12 a pound for store bought average jerky or, ~$8 to ~$20 (plus time) a pound for steller homemade jerky? Seems like an obvious choice to me :)
 
Just made some fresh deer jerky yesterday. If you are unsure how to mix, and want some now, go to Walmart and buy there mix. Works pretty good. Add hot sauce and it is easy and good.

I use a dehydrator. I marinade the strips in the above mentioned or a mixture of teriyaki,hot sauce,brownsugar,black pepper, and a little salt. Let it soak over night and it's ready for drying. Just make sure you ration it or it won't last over a day.

My daughter, who will not touch deer fixed on the stove, will take all the deer jerky that she can get. Good stuff. Any cheap cut or ground beef will work as well.

Good fixin
Dean
 
I do the following:

Cut strips of meat (usually London Broil when on sale) removing all fat.

Teriyaki isn't bad, neither is worchestershire sauce. I also mix in a seasoning such as Tony Chachere's Creole seasoning and course ground black pepper. Marinate in the mix of choice overnight.

I use a Brinkman smoker. I put a toothpick thru one end of the meat, usually two or three strips per touthpick and hang down thru the grill. I'll start a small fire in the fire pan with about 5 or 6 brickettes of charcoal and add a few mesquite or hickory chips to it. I have the fire pan on the ground and just set the whole smoker over it for a couple of hours. I then have a hot plate SET ON LOW! (That is important, set it on LOW). Set the smoker over it and you will have jerky the next day.

I have stayed away from the dehydrator but if I were to use one I would smoke the meat somehow as mentioned above for the extra taste. It wouldn't take long and is worth it my opinion.

Craig

fotr_043.gif
 
I LOVE jerky and have been making my own for a while. I use a dehydrater, because that's all I have, but I would use a smoker to if I had one. I do some jerky just like the guys above using butcher sliced lean roast, but I like mine REALLY spicy and the best mixture I've found so far is a pinch of brown sugar and a bottle of Chipotle Tabasco sauce(The nice thing about this sauce is that is gives the meat a good smokey flavor, because the Chipolte is smoked, since I don't have a smoker), then I press the meat into cracked pepper...MAN it's good. One step I do to help stave off bacteria is soak the meat overnight in cure. I use Morton's Tender Quick.

But another way I've tried that cheap and fairly good is to get LEAN ground beef, add a little cure and let it sit. Then add some spices, I put it in plastic wrap and mold it into strips, then dehydrate. It's good, but not as good as the other.

Anyway, it's hard to go wrong with homemade jerky. It tastes better, has few to no chemicals and is SO much cheaper(except you eat 10X more).

Jared
 
"except you eat 10X more"

That is SO true.
:D :D :D

I'm gonna try the cracked pepper next time I make some. that sounds like a good idea.

There's no real need to cure the jerk for me cause "except you eat 10X more"
and quicker.
Tom
 
I read somewhere that the dehydrator needs to be above a certain temp to kill Listeria on the surface.

Or you could blanch it for a few seconds first.

I think, or I could have hallucinated it all.
 
I use my oven at 200 to dehydrate my deer jerky. Leave the door open a lil bit to let the moisture out. I fyou do a search on one of the hunting boards like realtree.com forums you'll get a lot of info and recipes.
 
"I read somewhere that the dehydrator needs to be above a certain temp to kill Listeria on the surface."

From all my jerky makin' days, you should start out drying at 160 degrees for one hour, then 150 degrees until you reach a moisture content of around 10%, depending on the humidity that day.

--Chris
 
I used my dehydrator to make some. Worked great. Marinate in something tasty, and let it dry. Make sure you let it dry for a long enough period though. Mine went moldy pretty quickly. Guess it wasnt dry enough.
 
Originally posted by Jared P
Listeria is an issue, that is why I cure the meat before dehydrating.
Click to expand...

Listeria really is over-rated... unless you have a very weak immune system, or you dry fouled meat.

I use a solar system to dry my meat/fish/fruits. Works great (well... huh... works better in summer, though ;)).

Basically it's just a black box with "drawers", and a window on top of it...

Cheers,

David
 
As a New Mexico chile addict, my jerky marinade leans that way:

1 bottle of beer
1/2 oz soy sauce
1 oz lemon juice
some salt
some garlic
lots of coarse chile piquin and chile arbole

cut meat into slices/strips and soak for several hours.

I use a dehydrator. Each time I get a tray full, I shake a layer of powdered extra hot green chile over it. Then dry overnight.

I like to take it out before it gets super dry, so I keep it in ziplock bags in the freezer until I am ready to use it. Even left a little soft, it will keep for several days at room temperature.
 
I have one of theose Brown plastic ones advertised on TV, works fine, although it doesn't have any temp. control on it.

So how important it the temp for the Listeria mentioned ?
 
Originally posted by C L Wilkins
With the grain but it really shouldn't matter either way.
Click to expand...

From what I've heard, and experimented with, if you cut across the grain your jerky will be more chewy and if you cut with the grain it will be more tough/crunchy.

But heck, not matter what, makin' and eatin' jerky is good. :D
 
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