Dehydrated Beef Jerky

It is no secret that I love my dehydrator and it gets a regular workout with making all sorts of fruit leather and dried fruit on a regular basis but every so often I squeeze in a few different things. Something we make occasionally is dehydrated beef jerky. It is actually pretty simple once you know what to do. It isn’t very pretty to take photos of though so I am going to leave you with just the one ugly shot and you will have to trust me that it is tasty.

My hot tips:
* Try to remove all the fat off your meat because the fat will make it spoil faster.
* Freeze your meat for a few hours as it is easier to slice thin if it is slightly frozen.
* Cut your meat against the grain so it is easier to chew once dried
* Marinate it for as long as possible to get richer and deeper flavours
* Store in a tightly sealed container in the fridge and eat within 2 weeks

My basic go to marinade for homemade beef jerky in the dehydrator is enough for 1 big steak.

INGREDIENTS:
½ cup soy sauce
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoons garlic powder
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon chilli flakes
2 teaspoons brown sugar

Mix marinade together to dissolve the sugar and toss the meat making sure each slice is saturated. Leave in the fridge to marinade up to 24 hours, if you are in a rush like I usually am it is ok to just do 3 hours. Lay out each slice on your dehydrator trays, dehydrate on 68C for 6 hours.

Depending on the humidity, your machine and how thick you sliced your meat to how long this might take, it could be as quick as 4 hours or up to 20 odd hours. Just keep an eye on it, turn every so often and remove when dry and leathery. You could do this in your oven if it goes low enough, or I have heard of people who prop the oven door open to keep the temperature lower if you wanted to give it a go.

I also like to make a jerky similar to what we had in Thailand, following the same instructions as above.

INGREDIENTS:
½ cup soy sauce
3 tablespoons palm sugar, just use brown sugar if you have none
1 teaspoon white pepper
1 tablespoon coriander seeds, crushed

To make it like the Thai’s do, once dehydrated you can deep fry your pieces before serving.

Do you like Jerky? Have you ever made it at home?