Made Beef Jerky
"Beef jerky time!"
--Eddie Murphy as Billy Ray Valentine in Trading Places
One of the things I always find to be a challenge is having access to good, reasonably priced grass fed beef jerky. I love beef jerky, but grass-fed beef jerky is both difficult to find and insanely expensive. Because of this, I wanted to try my hand at making my own.
I started with a three pound piece of grass fed bavette I got at Fatted Calf. This is a cut that comes from the abdominal area of the cow, the same area as a flank steak.
I stuck it in the freezer for about an hour. This makes it easier to cut later.
While the meat was in the freezer, I made the marinade, which consisted of tamari, pepper, liquid smoke, honey, red pepper flakes, onion salt, and worcestershire sauce. I put all the ingredients into a gallon size ziploc bag.
About an hour later, I cut it into a few manageable pieces.
Then I took the meat and cut thin strips.
I put all the strips I cut into the marinade and let it sit in the refrigerator overnight.
J thought it would be a cool idea to try cooking this jerky two different ways: in the oven and in a food dehydrator. That's what I did. The next morning, I took the meat and laid it out on a wire rack on top of a cookie sheet. I put that in the oven at 190 degrees in the convection oven. This would help circulate some air while heating it simultaneously.
Similarly but taking up much more time, I also laid the rest of the beef on five trays of a food dehydrator. This required a 36 hour cooking time and rotation of the trays every 12 hours.
Both actually came out well. I enjoyed sampling some of it and can't wait for an occasion to take jerky with me somewhere.
I ended up liking the dehydrated one because the texture was closer in consistency to beef jerky we're used to eating. It may take a considerable amount of time, but it's really not too difficult, and it tastes delicious. This is definitely a recommended project, and I'll likely do this again in the near future.
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