Here’s a simple recipe on how to do it

A few weeks ago I tried making beef jerky for the first time. I ended up with 350 g of beef jerky from the 1.1 kg raw meat I bought. And it was much easier than I thought, so I just want to share with you how I made it and which recipe I followed:

Just starting out I had a lot of questions coming to mind. Do you need a special type of meat? Do you need special remedies? Will a regular oven do? And how long does it take to dry the meat? First of all I read a little bit about it. One of the things I found is that you need meat with only little or no fat at all. I didn’t know if you could only use certain types of meat or if anything goes that doesn’t have fat on it. So I went to our local grocery store and talked to the butcher. He didn’t know about making beef jerky either, but he suggested a cut for roast beef. 1.1 kg. to be exact.

It seems that any meat without fat will do. And I guess you don’t have to follow the recipe below unless you’re looking to add some flavour to the meat. Actually I think I will try a regular brine next time or maybe try to leave out this part of the process all together, since I love the pure taste of meat. I have a regular oven with a hot air oven functionality which I believe is recommended since it generates dry heat instead of moist heat. Anyway here is what I did:

I googled “Beef Jerky Recipe” and found this Danish recipe that I followed:

For the marinade you will need the following ingredients:

0,5 liters of ale beer
1 spoon of lemon juice
2 teaspoons of honey
1/4 teaspoon of dijon mustard or the like
2-3 spoons of soya sauce

Procedure:

Slice your meat into about 5 mm. thick slices.

Pour the ale into a bowl, add the rest of the ingredients and stir it all together. After that you add the meat to the marinade and leave it in the fridge for 24 hours. When you take your meat out the day after you turn on your oven to about 70-75° C. Then drain off the marinade for about 10 minutes and place the meat on the oven rack. Let it cook for about 3 hours. You may need to turn the rack around half way through. Also remeber to put a baking pan underneath the rack as a lot of moist will drip down from the meat. The recipe here suggests you check your meat every 15 minutes after one hour. I didn’t do that though. I started checking it after 2,5 hours. And 3 hours was perfect for my meat. Maybe I was just lucky.

Your beef jerky is done when it is crust enough to tear apart without breaking (It should maintain a certain elasticity otherwise you overcooked it).

After you take out your beeff jerky from the oven, you place it spread out on a piece of parchment paper and leave it to dry another 3-5 hours before you can pack it up. To do so you can use either plastic bags or jars. Try to store them with as little air as possible.

Storing beef jerky:
You can store your beef jerky for different lengths of time under different circumstances:

Outside in normal temperatues you should always use your senses to judge if it is contaminated.
In the fridge it will last about 6 months.
In the freezer it will last up to a year.

Good luck.