After experimenting for the past year with making beef jerky, this is the recipe that my family likes the best. It reminds me a lot of the stuff we used to get when I was a kid. You know, the kind you got at the butcher shop, not the grocery store. A bit of smoke, a bit of salt, some peppery flavor, and beefy goodness. Not so dry and chewy that it hurt your jaw and cut the inside of your mouth. What I call Smoke House Beef Jerky.

Tips and Tricks for Beef Jerky

You’ll have to decide how you are going to dehydrate the jerky. There are three methods, all of them work, each of them has pluses and minuses.

1. Your oven …. yes, you can dehydrate meats, peppers, vegetables, and fruits in your oven. The big plus is you already have this and know how it works. The downside is that you are using your oven for this and can’t use it for other things
2. A dehydrator …. the obvious choice for dehydrating things. I have this Nestor dehydrator and it works well. A big plus, they are easy to use. But they have to sit somewhere and take up a bunch of kitchen counter space.
3. A smoker …. this is a great choice to make sure you get smoke house flavor. But it takes more effort than the other two options.

• About the meat – You want something very lean. I use round roast (top, bottom, eye are all good), but you could use flank steak, skirt steak, sirloin tip as well.
• Trimming – You definitely need to trim the meat well. Fat will get rancid since it can’t be completely dehydrated. Your jerky won’t last nearly as long if you leave a lot of intermuscular fat on it. So, get all the intermuscular fat and silver skin trimmed off. If there are any seams with fat in them in the cut, you want those out, too.
• Slicing the meat – Nice and thin, across the grain. I use my slicer and get as close to 1/8” as I can. Go across the grain unless you like your jerky really chewy, in which case you can slice with the grain. But it will be CHEWY. You can slice thicker, but it will take much longer to dehydrate fully.
• To smoke or not – I don’t smoke and I do use liquid smoke (I know, I know). But it tastes good. You can also smoke at 175F (no hotter or you will cook, not dehydrate). If you’re going to smoke the jerky, omit the liquid smoke.
• Storage – your jerky will last up to 4 weeks in the refrigerator. I just stick it in gallon ziplock bags, squeeze the air out, and put it in the fridge. I imagine you could freeze and save for later, but I’ve never actually had a bag worth of jerky that lasted more than 4-5 days, max.
• I am giving the recipe for 1 lb of beef. Scale accordingly. The recipe card can scale for you by servings. I estimate 4 servings from 1 lb of meat.

About Curing The Beef

You actually could omit the Prague Powder #1 if you prefer, however it won’t taste like that smoke house beef jerky. Prague Powder #1 is a curing salt, also called Pink Salt (not Himalayan Salt). It does contain nitrates and nitrites. Used properly, they are safe for humans. And contrary to what the labels indicated, those packages of “uncured” meats still contain nitrates and nitrites. The processor used celery salt instead of Prague Powder #1. But celery is a naturally occurring source of nitrates/nitrites. Once cured, the jerky will last much longer. If you only cure it with salt, it will have about half the shelf life as if you use both salt and Prague Powder.

Smoke House Beef Jerky

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Recipe by Eric Course: SnacksCuisine: AmericanDifficulty: Easy

Servings

4

servings

Prep time

30

minutes

Cooking time

4

hours 

Calories

201

kcal

Curing Time

24

hours

Total time

4

hours 

30

minutes

Just like you got when you were a kid on road trips. Tastes and feels like that old school smoke house beef jerky.

Ingredients

• 1 lb lean beef – Round, Flank, Skirt, Sirloin Tip all work well

• 1 1/2 tsp sea salt (not iodized)

• 1 1/2 tsp fine ground black pepper

• 1 1/2 tsp brown sugar

• 1/2 tsp onion powder

• 1/2 tsp garlic powder

• 1/4 tsp ground coriander

• 1/2 cup beef broth

• 1/4 cup water

• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

• 1/4 tsp Prague Powder #1

• 1/2 tsp liquid smoke (I use Wright’s Hickory) (omit this if you are going to smoke the jerky)

Method

• Trim the meat well. We do not want any silver skin or intermuscular fat at all. Nor any seams between muscles in the cut of meat
• Slice the meat, across the grain, as close to 1/8” slices as possible.
• Mix all of the brine ingredients together in a medium size mixing bowl.
• Put the meat in the bowl and mix together well by hand. You want every slice well coated with brine.
• Put the meat in a gallon ziplock bag, pour the brine liquid in, squeeze all the air out and seal.
• Put in the fridge for a minimum of 1 hour. I prefer overnight to give the meat more opportunity to absorb the various brine components to the greatest extent possible.
• When ready, with about 6 hours of time to spare, set up your dehydrator, oven, or smoker to dehydrate the meat. An oven at 175F works well (although gas ovens will not dehydrate well. The gas introduces a lot of moisture as it burns). A smoker kept around 175F will also work well. Or just spend the few bucks and get the dehydrator already.
• Lay out all of the meat flat in the dehydrator. Don’t overlap the meat. No need to rinse it very much, just pull out of the brine, pat dry with paper towels and then into the oven/dehydrator/smoker.
• The meat will need 5-6 hours to become jerky. Longer if the slices are thicker.
• Beef jerky is done when a piece of the jerky bends in half, cracks on the bend line, but doesn’t break. It will feel like jerky, as well. Until it is done, it will feel a bit spongy to the touch, not that dry, rough feel of jerky.
• That’s it!

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