Beef Jerky- The easiest DIY project ever!
Well, I guess I should qualify the title of this post a little. Beef jerky IS the easiest DIY project IF you have the right equipment. Without the right equipment, it could possibly be the second easiest.
Anyway, recently, in preparation for an upcoming move, I was organizing my stuff in the garage. In doing so I came across my dehydrator and its accessories, and so decided to whip up a batch of my quick and easy home made beef jerky. Just like maw used to make.
It's what's for dinner...
I start with a pound of ground beef. Ordinarily I will only buy the highest quality (aka lowest fat content) ground beef available, which is typically 93/7 ratio. However, for beef jerky, I ditch the healthy kick and go for the cheap stuff. This is somewhere around 85/15 or so. I have made jerky out of every kind of ground meat imaginable (except ostrich), and I have found beef to be the best by far, especially with higher fat contents.
Once I thaw the meat, I mix it up with the curing salt first, and then some seasoning. You can use specialized salt, or sea salt to cure the meat. There are loads of free guides that will give you the proper ratios and measurements for it all. I choose the easy way these days, so I buy the pre-packaged salt/seasoning, as seen below.
The easy way
This is available at both Wal-Mart and Target, and a whole host of other stores. NESCO is really the brand you’ll see the most often if you get into dehydrating much. They are a good brand, and pretty inexpensive. I use their four-stack dehydrator, and their jerky gun as well.
Once I mix in the ingredients for about five minutes, I am ready to start forming my jerky. With ground beef you have to form the jerky into something that will dry easily and be easily eaten. You can either make the “slim jim” style of jerky, or the flat style of jerky. If you have a jerky maker, like I do, this is as easy as stuffing the meat into the gun and pointing the nozzle. I make mine about four to six inches long each. If you don’t have such a contraption, you will have to try to roll it by hand, which is a pain, but is not impossible.
The meat gun.
Alternatives to this are to use flank steak or other cuts of meat that is thin enough to pull into strips and dry. You don’t want to have thick chunks of meat, however, because that will cause you to dry the meat for several days. Getting the right level of moisture left in the meat is a delicate process. This is why ground beef is so easy. Six to eight hours will give you the same consistency every time.
So, however you choose to form your meat, the next step is to put it on the dehydrating trays, like you see above. Take care not to put the meat too close to each other as you have to create enough room for the air flow to be effective. This limits my trays to about eight strips per tray or so. I am able to fit the whole pound of beef on four trays perfectly.
Beef jerky
For a pound of ground beef I leave the dehydrator on between six and eight hours, depending on where I am drying, and what the humidity is like. I usually use the garage, and I usually start it as I am going to sleep around 10:00pm, and get it at 6:00am. You can do less, but with less time you’ll approach a consistency where the beef will fall apart. If you leave it on for much more than eight hours, it will be very tough and will crumble when you eat it. The consistency should be soft enough to bend the jerky somewhat, but hard enough that you have to bite through it.
Mmmmmm... Jerky
When you first take it off the dehydrator it will have a lot of grease on it. I usually lay out a long paper towel, and lay all the strips on it. 
I then cover the strips with another paper towel and let as much of the grease get soaked up as I can. I then bag it quickly to preserve its dehydrated state, and enjoy with some friends, or add to my camping stash of food.
Finished and ready to eat
One pound makes about two sandwich bags full of jerky.
