What comes to mind when you consider jerky? Fast snacks from the convenience store? Food for long car trips? Believe me, there's more to jerky than just that. Convenient and easy to eat, jerky is a tasty food that is good for you too. There are many varieties of jerky now days, and once you know how to fix it yourself, you can make some delicious snacks for yourself or your family.
So where do you start? A good place to begin is to decide the type of jerky you want to make. What kind of meat should you use? Given the huge assortment of meats used these days for making jerky, you could go with something as ordinary as pork or as wild as emu. I don't know about you, but there's not a huge 'emu' department in my local store, so for this article, let's just go with an old standard, beef.
Another great reason to make jerky is that you can use whatever quality of beef you can afford. Start by cutting across the grain into strips. How thick you cut is your choice, but keep in mind that thin strips dry faster and thick strips make chewy jerky.
Once you've cut the beef the way you want it, marinade for ten hours in a combination of Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, garlic, pepper, onion powder and salt. Now of course this is just a basic mix to get you started. You can marinade the beef in whatever seasoning you want. Be courageous and try something exotic!
After the required marinading time has passed, you're ready to dry. There are a few different ways you can dry the beef. First, you can use your oven by putting the setting on warm. You will need to put the strips flat in the oven on a rack and you'll need to open the door frequently to let moisture out so your beef will dry out. Normally, drying with this procedure takes anywhere from two to ten hours.
Deciding to make jerky with a food dehydrator is also a good idea, but of course you'll need to buy a dehydrator which can be found a retail stores and online. Dehydrators make the whole process go by a bit quicker, and you can still use your oven for other things.
How do you know when the jerky is done? When drying is complete, the beef will look stringy and cracked. Take the jerky out of the oven or dehydrator and store in zip lock bags. If you have some small zip lock bags you can store for individual snacks for the whole family to take to school, work or for road trips.
Now that you know how easy it is to make homemade jerky, get out and find some recipes and experiment. Enjoy!
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