How to Make Delicious Homestead Beef Jerky

To me nothing is better than homemade, this includes homemade homestead beef jerky! this savory and simple recipe is great to have on hand as delicious snacks or little boosts of protein to your diet.

Type of Meat for Beef Jerky

You can realistically use any cut of meat that you would prefer. The more typical cuts are the eye of round, flank, top or bottom round, and London Broil; just as long as the meat is as lean as possible. I prefer the top round myself as it is tender and cuts into nice little strips.

When cutting your meat if you cut along the grain this will make your jerky a little more chewier, whereas cutting against the grain will make it more tender. TIP: before cutting the meat if you put it into the freezer for approximately 30 mins, this will make it much easier to cut into thin strips.

You want your strips to be about 1/8 to 1/4 in thickness. if you cut it thicker than that, it will take much longer for it to dry out. Generally, this is your preference though.

Beef Jerky Marinade

So the advantage of making your jerky is the opportunity for you to mix and match your flavors and the most important thing is that you get to control what ingredients are in them. To me, the store-bought is always either way too sweet or way too salty.

Have you seen our Delicious Cast Iron Ribeye Recipe? it is mouth-watering!

So you can add your homemade BBQ sauce, or add some habanero if you want a spicy kick, your options are entirely up to you. For this recipe, I used hickory liquid smoke, low sodium soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, seasoned salt, garlic powder, onion powder, and black pepper. If you do want a bit of sweetness you can as some hive honey to the mixture.

Cooking your Beef Jerky

There are multiple ways to cook your jerky such as a smoker, the oven, or a dehydrator. I will focus on the latter two options.

Oven:

When placing your jerky in the oven, I suggest using wire cooling racks to lay the meat on with a baking pan lined with aluminum foil underneath, this will allow the air and heat to access both sides of the meat. You will still have to flip the jerky about the halfway point though and having the pan underneath will prevent ALOT of mess for you to have to clean up later. You can thank me later!

Dehydrator:

This is my preferred method of making jerky, but not everyone has access to one. Now as with anything different manufacturers will suggest different times and temperatures, so be sure to check their guidance based on the one you use.

I have an Excalibur dehydrator (affiliate link to Amazon) that I love and have been using for years! I cook mine at 155 degrees for about 4 hours. Once that time is up, the jerky is perfect in my humble opinion.

Anyway, use whatever method you feel is best for you.

How to make Homestead Beef Jerky

I hope you have enjoyed making some of this with me today, I’d love to hear your feedback and how yours turned out.

Until Next Time,

God Bless.