Giddy Up, It’s Beef Jerky Time

There is something that I truly love as a snack, or for that matter, breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and that is beef jerky. I fell in love with this snack when I was roughly nine or ten years old. It all started with a tin of jerky. Looked similar to that of chewing tobacco. My dad also had a love for jerky, and he began to smoke, bake, and dehydrate meat combinations to find the perfect jerky. In my opinion, they were all delicious. My desire to get on the jerky train was all started a few weeks back when my brother-n-law (Mike) and I were at a store while on vacation. We decided we would buy some Corona beer, as it was a hot summer day. Upon check-out, there was a tube full of homemade jerky. This was no slim jim type jerky, and nor would I ever consider slim jims as beef jerky. That is just slim sausage. Anyway, both of us were like “yeah, dude, jerky”.

That day, I told Mike “I’m making this stuff!”. I started with the source, my dad. He sent me a recipe to begin with, and of course I tweaked it with some other ingredients. I wanted to use my smoker to slow cook the meat, however my dad informed me to place it in the oven for 10 hours at a low heat, in my case 140 degrees with the oven slightly cracked.

Here is what I did, along with ingredient breakdown:

Ingredients:

• 2 flank steaks cut against the grain, 1/4 inch strips, or to your liking
• garlic powder
• a 1/4 tsp of liquid smoke
• 1/2 cup of soy sauce
• 1/2 cup of worcestershire sauce
• pepper
• onion powder
• chili powder
• oyster sauce
• aluminum foil

Place the cutup meat into a large ziploc bag. Add the wet ingredients and mix thoroughly in the bag. Add the dry ingredients and begin to massage the meat from the outside, that way you are not touching the meat. 🙂 Seal the bag and place in a bowl in case of any leaks. Marinade overnight or 24 hours or so.

When you are ready to get jerky, take the meat out and pat dry. Cover 2 baking sheets with aluminum foil. Preheat your oven to the lowest temperature, in my oven’s case 140 degrees. My dad did stress that the oven door need to remain open. He also stated that the smell of the house in the morning would be so great that we would be jumping around like a bunch of monkeys; something like that.

I woke early that morning and immediately checked the oven and took the jerky out. You could tell it lost ‘weight’ and my dad was right about the smell (not that I needed to smell delicious meat like that at 7am).

I kid you not, the jerky was awesome. A bit salty, but for the first batch and getting a process nailed down, it was killer. I served it throughout the day as it was my daughter Elena’s birthday party, and literally, it was almost all gone.

My hats off to Mike for getting my brain thinking about making jerky, and to my parents for handing down their experience and recipe. Watch out for upcoming jerky recipes!