How to make beef jerky?

M

Matt Seling

Joined
Oct 12, 1998
Messages
285
Hi,
when I lived in the States in 89 I loved beef jerky. In Europe it´s hard to get, if at all.I was thinking to make my own. What do I need and how do I proceed.?
Thanks in advance
Matt from Munich
now in Cologne
 
You can make jerky by cutting meat into thin strips and drying it for a few hours in an ordinary oven at low temperature (200 F.). Place it on a cookie sheet or similar surface. I've made beef, moose and venison jerky that way. You can also marinate it before drying for a different flavor. But it's basically just dried meat. Store it dry and it'll last a long time.
 
Gruss Dich, Matt!!

If you search google.com or other search engines, you'll find there are a lot of recipes for jerky variations on the web.

I got 100 hits for it here http://chef2chef.com/ by entering "beef jerky" into the search field of that webpage. I have traditionally found the SOAR achives at Univ of California Berkeley to be a good source for recipes. http://www.recipesource.com/

Best of luck making the jerky. You could try veal (much more common in Europe than in USA) after marinating it, chicken, or game animal/bird meats which I also found to be more commonly available in Europe.

Ed, do you cut the meat strips across the grain of the meat or along (parallel to) the grain of the meat??? I would guess across the grain would make the jerky easier to bite off with your teeth.

Auf Wiederhoren,
- Greg -
 
I cut across the grain for ease of chewing, but some of the old timers ripped the meat into strips that went with the grain. Probably held together well but was tougher to chew.

I use a commercial dehydrator with a fan. Places like www.cabelas.com usually stock them. The models without fans are often under $50 and work fine. The fan models work faster but cost a few bucks more. They are also good for dehydrating fruits and vegetables. You can even dry quality pasta sauce and rehydrate it while backpacking.

One of my former roommates used to make trout jerky seasoned with a little lemon pepper and it was very tasty.
 
Greg,
I always cut it the long way along the grain but I suppose there's no reason you couldn't cut it across the grain to make it easier to bite off. Friends of ours used to tie a piece of moose jerky to their babies' wrists when their kids were teething. The babies could chew away on the jerky all day to their gums' content.:)
 
I use a Cabela's dehydrator, it works great. I also cut across the grain, but if you buy a good cut of meat - say a really lean London Broil - it seems to work well either way.
 
This is only minimal help with roasts from the butcher but if you're cutting up meat straight off the bone (breaking down a haunch, etc) you'll find it's faster to cut the muscle off the bone at each end, lay it out, slice into it at one end about 1/4-1/2" and then slice the knife long ways with the grain along the bottom of the chunk of meat. Keep the knife 1/2" above your cutting board slicing (reminds me of slicing the skin off a fish fillet). You come to the end of the muscle and flip the meat over and keep slicing, repeat this over and over as the muscle mass shrinks. You wind up slicing a long, long thin ribbon of meat from each hunk of muscle/meat this way. Great to hang on racks in the prairie wind and smoke and also good for racks in the oven.
 
I like to cut across the grain. It's just easier to chew and won't affect the meat otherwise. Cut thick slices, not thin.

I think the oven works great. I stick a round toothpick through the end of each strip and hang them from the wire rack in the oven. You can make an awful lot of jerkey this way. Put the oven on the lowest setting, stick the handle of a wooden spoon between the oven door and the oven to allow moisture to escape more quickly (you can take this out after a couple of hours). Go to bed and when you get up the next day, you will have an oven load of jerkey.:eek: Make sure you line the bottom of the oven with aluminum foil.

Recently I just tried a jerkey shooter. The jerkey is REALLY easy to chew. I like it. It's easier to flavor the meat too. No more marinade bacause you can work the flavorings right into the meat. Save your teeth, get a jerkey shooter!;)
 
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