My Progress

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Pepper Beef Jerky

My best friend called me last night on his way over and asked if I had a recipe for pepper jerky.  He’d just bought a dehydrator and wanted to try it out.  I did some research on the net and came up with the recipe below.  I got some of my ingredients from this site and it has some great tips listed as well.  I would also recommend reading through this page on food safety for making jerky.  We used a package of outside round steaks.  We also tried a package of cheaper blade steak but ended up cutting nearly half of the weight of the package off in fat and gristle, so the outside round was way cheaper per pound, in the end.

Ingredients

3 lbs flank steak, round steak or brisket, cut ½” thick
1½  Tbsp salt
½ cup warm water
½ cup soya sauce
¼ cup Worcestershire sauce
2 Tbsp brown sugar
2 Tbsp coarse ground pepper
2 tsp onion powder
2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp Tabasco sauce
1 tsp liquid smoke

 
Directions

Cut meat in 1½” wide strips with grain. Trim as much fat as possible, as it is the fat that makes it go rancid down the road.  Partially freezing the meat makes slicing it thin easier.
Dissolve salt in warm water and then add remaining ingredients.  Add the meat strips to the marinade mix.

Divide the meat and marinate in two big Ziploc freezer bags.  Refrigerate marinade bags for 24 hours occasionally shaking the bags to coat and mix. 
Place strips of meat on paper towels for a few minutes to drain.
Then place strips of meat on cooling racks in a jellyroll pan or cookie sheet lined with tinfoil. (or on the dehydrator racks)
Turn heat on to 160 degrees (needs to be at least 160 to kill any bacteria) and cook at this temperature for 5 to 6 hours with oven door slightly cracked open.  (We used both the new dehydrator and my convection oven)
After cooking, turn off heat, open oven door and let air dry for 8 hours more.
Package jerky in bags or jars. Jerky can be kept 1 to 2 months, more if refrigerated.
The final result was delicious and tender jerky that tasted to me just like Oberto's or Jack Link's peppered beef jerky at your local Kwik-E-Mart.  Only we didn't pay $8 for a hundred grams.  Less than $10 for 1.2 kg of meat which works out to nearly 2 pounds of jerky by the time it's dried.  Cheap like borscht.
My friend likes his jerky with lots of pepper, so he said this was perfect.  For my taste, I'm going to make another batch and only put half the amount of pepper in.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks yummy, I'll have to let my son try it - he's the jerky maker.- from Facebook

Diane Stringam Tolley said...

I heard all about the jerky making marathon. Any invites for a taste?

Rhonda said...

It was fun Logan thanks for having us up there and making the jerky. Next time we will have to stay longer so you dont have to do it all night. Hey you should have taken more jerky he left and I have peppered jerky left in my fridge. Does that tempt you to come down? haha