How Much Salt Is in a Bag of Beef Jerky

Smokey, salty, and merely the right corporeality of sugariness, beef jerky is a perfect snack for hiking, camping ground, and route-tripping. Learn how to make your ain flavorful and tender beef hasty using either a dehydrator or an oven!

Making your own beefiness hasty at home is non simply incredibly elementary, only it is also much much cheaper than buying store-bought jerky. Plus, you'll exist able to control all the ingredients that go into making it; no weird stabilizers or unpronounceable additives.

So if y'all're ready to start making your own beef jerky, you've come to the right place. In this article, we share everything we know nigh making tender homemade beef jerky.

Why We Dearest It:

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

Quick Tips for Making Beef Jerky

• 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 beefiness with a mallet is definitely worth the endeavour
• Employ a Ziploc bag or reusable alternative for the marinade, which allows you to coat each strip of beef past massaging the outside of the pocketbook.
• Preheat your dehydrator, and dehydrate at 160 F to ensure beefiness remains at food-safety temperature.
• Set a timer! Beef jerky can become over dehydrated if left in for too long, so y'all volition want to pull it before 100% of the water has evaporated.

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

Best Cuts of Meat for Beefiness Hasty

Any lean cut of beef will work great for making jerky. In fact, when you're selecting a cut for your hasty, the leaner the amend.

The reason is that fat doesn't dehydrate. H2o moisture will evaporate out of the beefiness during the dehydration procedure, but the fat will remain. And excessive amounts of fatty tin lead to your jerky going rancid.

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

By going with a lean cut of beefiness, you reduce the corporeality of fat you need to cut out. Plus, these are ofttimes the cheaper cuts of meat!

These are our go-to cuts for making beef jerky:

• Top Round
• Middle of Circular
• Superlative Sirloin
• London Bake

Withal, if yous're looking for a really "primo" cut of beef to use for jerky, we'd advise using flank steak. It's past far the priciest option, but it has a really nifty flavor and tin exist cut into long thin strips.

What Do With Fatty?

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

You will desire to cutting away whatsoever large caps of fat gristle. This tin be accomplished by running your knife underneath it, lifting up a tab of fat, and shaving away at a shallow angle with your pocketknife.

You may too notice some thin "veins" of intermuscular fat running through the meat. Whether you lot want to cutting these out is entirely up to you.

If you are really trying to maximize storage life, you tin can go ahead and advisedly cut these out. Merely if you're planning on eating in your jerky relatively before long, it is fine to leave them. We only always cutting out the actually big line of fatty and get out the residual.

How to Cut the Beefiness

After y'all've selected the cut of beefiness, the adjacent step is to decide which direction you want to slice information technology.

At that place are two schools of thought on this:

• If yous desire your jerky to be chewy and so you will desire to cut with the grain.
• If you want your hasty to tender, you will want to cut against the grain.

We tend to favor slicing confronting the grain, but it's totally up to you lot.

In terms of thickness, you want to slice the beef as thin as you tin. Mayhap non paper-thin (which is kind of impossible with beef), just somewhere in the ⅛ to ¼ of an inch zone. If the hasty is too thick it will be harder to dehydrate and will end up being much tougher to chew.

If you are buying your meat from a butcher counter, the easiest way to slice your beef is to inquire the butcher to slice it for you!

This is usually a free service, plus they have these astonishing industrial meat slicing machines, then each slice will come out perfectly uniform.

No butcher around? No worries! Information technology's easy to slice the beef with a knife at home IF you follow this one pull a fast one on!

To make the beef easier to piece, place information technology in the freezer for 1-ii hours beforehand or until information technology becomes semi-frozen. (non frozen like a stone, only business firm) Beefiness is then much easier to slice when it's semi-frozen.

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

The Importance of Tenderizing

1 of the virtually mutual complaints virtually beef hasty (whether homemade or store-bought) is that it feels like chewing tree bark. Nosotros become it, nobody wants to gnaw away on a beef-flavored woodchip. So what's to be done?

The first matter you can do is choose the right direction to slice your beef, which we covered higher up. Against the grain = more than tender.

The next thing is to brand certain y'all properly tenderize your meat. At that place are ii ways to go most this: manually or with a powder.

Pounding the beef with a meat tenderizing mallet volition physically break downwards the musculus fibers, resulting in a more tender texture. While a little labor-intensive this method is very effective (sometimes a trivial likewise effective). Brand sure not to over tenderize! The beef slices need to retain some structure! You lot 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 fifty-fifty thickness.

Meat tenderizing powders are fabricated from enzymes. They are most normally derived either from papain, which comes from papayas, or from bromelain, which comes from pineapples. These can exist sprinkled onto the beef and will commencement working to break down the fibers as soon equally it gets placed into the dehydrator (activated past heat).

The other essential part of tenderizing is using a well-salted beef hasty marinade. Salt will naturally start to break down the musculus fibers, yielding a more tender jerky.

Beef Jerky Marinade

Simply similar with BBQ sauces, the marinade is the clandestine X factor in every beef jerky recipe. The exact ingredients and proportions are often highly coveted trade secrets.

Thankfully you won't have to twist our arm to get our recipe (it'southward in the recipe card beneath!) Our recipe does a keen job recreating that classic "original" jerky season, merely y'all can totally arrange the spices to make this recipe your ain.

Merely think non to add any fats/oils to your hasty marinade (lots of grilling marinades call for fats) if yous plan on storing it for whatever length of time.

Which is Improve: Oven or Dehydrator?

Yous can make delicious tasting beef jerky using either. Withal, y'all will go meliorate and more than consistent results if you apply a dehydrator.

Dehydrators offering much better temperature control (especially at the lower temperatures needed for dehydrating) and they provide vastly ameliorate airflow.

We volition requite instructions for both methods, but if y'all want to get serious about making hasty then you lot will want to consider picking up a dehydrator. They tin be very affordable and have a ton of other great uses.

Equipment Spotlight: Dehydrators

If yous're in the market for a dehydrator, we recommend buying one that has an adaptable temperature, which will let y'all to dial in the drying temp to requite yous the best results for private ingredients. The dehydrator we use and recommend near often is the COSORI Premium. Yous tin find our other favorite dehydrators here.

Beef jerky before and later on dehydrating

How to Dehydrate Beefiness Jerky

To dehydrate your hasty, preheat your dehydrator to 160F. If you're using your oven, preheat to 160F or as depression as you can set it.

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

The drying fourth dimension will depend on how thick the beef was sliced, full load, humidity in your infinite, and your detail machine–double bank check your dehydrator's manual. We observe that jerky usually takes between four-half dozen hours. Every so often, use a newspaper towel to absorb any fat, and shuffle or rotate the trays if needed to promote even drying.

Properly dried jerky should fissure when bent, but not intermission. Exist sure to test using a cooled slice.

We personally like to store our beefiness jerky in reusable mason jars which are airtight.

All-time Ways to Store Beef Jerky

How you store your beefiness hasty will frequently depend on when you intend on eating it. The longer y'all want to store it, the more specific the storing process needs to become.

Upward to a week: Beef jerky will be fine for up to a week in a not-airtight reusable or plastic baggie. The less exposure to air the ameliorate, and information technology's a good idea to keep out of direct calorie-free.

Up to a month: You lot will want to utilise an airtight container (Mason jar, resealable container with gasket lid). It can exist stored at room temperature simply should exist kept away from direct light.

3-6 months: For anything over a calendar month, beef jerky should be vacuum-sealed in an airtight container. FoodSaver makes a multifariousness of ways of vacuum-sealing food either in plastic pouches or reusable Stonemason jars. You lot will want to shop it in the refrigerator.

Upwardly to a twelvemonth: To maximize the storage time of your beefiness jerky, you lot volition want to vacuum-seal it in an airtight container and store information technology in the freezer. You lot may too consider using a moisture-absorbing packet.

Other recipes yous'll enjoy

↠ Teriyaki Beef Jerky
↠ How To Make Fruit Leathers
↠ Trail Mix Recipes
↠ Backpacking Food Ideas

• 2 pounds beefiness, (lean cuts are best & will keep longer)
• ¼ loving cup soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons worcestershire sauce
• ii tablespoons brownish sugar
• ii teaspoons salt
• one teaspoon garlic pulverisation
• ane teaspoon onion powder
• one teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1 teaspoon blackness pepper
• one teaspoon meat tenderizer, *optional

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going night

• Thinly slice the meat* and cut off all visible fatty.

• Pound slices with a meat tenderizer mallet until pieces are uniform thickness (aprox nickel width).

• Place the beef strips in a naught-top bag. Mix remaining ingredients and pour over beef.

• Cover & marinate for 12-36 hours. Shake the bag a few times as it'south marinating to brand 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 whatever fat droplets that appear on the surface. Exam using a cooled slice. Properly dried jerky, when bent, should crack but not break.

• Packet jerky in and air-tight container or vacuum seal (*see storage notes below). Store in a cool, dark & dry out place.

*Partially freezing the meat makes it easier to piece. Cutting with the grain for chewier jerky & cut against the grain for tender merely more brittle pieces.

Storage Notes:
Properly dried and packaged hasty will continue for a calendar week at room temp in a regular zip-meridian bag, upward to a month at room temp in an air-tight container, 3-vi months in an air-tight container in the fridge, and up to a year if vacuum sealed and stored in the freezer.

Calories: 163 kcal | Carbohydrates: 4 thou | Protein: 28 g | Fat: iv g | Potassium: 395 mg

*Nutrition is an estimate based on information provided by a 3rd-party nutrition calculator

This recipe was originally contributed past Kira and Brendon of Adventurehaks.com and was updated 11/21 with additional data | Recipe adjusted from Allrecipes.com

Fresh Off The Grid is a culinary resource for the outdoor community. We offer a collection of recipes, how-to guides, and camp cooking gear to assist you savor swell food in the not bad outdoors!

wilsondisid1994.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.freshoffthegrid.com/simple-beef-jerky-recipe/

Share this post