How To Make Great Beef Jerky From A Cheap Cut Of Beef

do [Music] ever since i was a little kid i have loved beef jerky it was my favorite snack then it's my favorite snack now when my parents would buy beef jerky for me at the store and bring it home i just loved it but since i've learned how to make it myself i've had just such a great time experimenting with flavors and as today experimenting with price points because i've done beef jerky with really expensive cuts of beef sort of middle range cuts of beef but beef right now is really expensive so i decided i was going to get the cheapest cut of beef that i could find just at my regular grocery store take that and we're going to turn it into some great jerky so what i have here is a chuck cross rib roast something it was 3.99 a pound it actually has really good marbling on its usda choice this is the kind of cut of beef that you would cook slow normally you would put it in the crock pot or something like that turn it into pot roast but beef jerky jerkifying beef is the great equalizer you can take very tender cuts you can take very tough cuts and turn them into great jerky and that's what we're going to do here today i've got two of these and the first thing i want to do is i want to get this thick layer of fat off the outside internal fat i'm not worried about a little bit of this i'm not going to worry about but this sort of piece right here especially i want to get rid of and kind of slide it right through there and follow along it's also got some membrane there and we don't have to be perfect we don't have to get every last tiny little bit but we want to get the majority of it still some more over here and this is a lot of that membrane lose a little bit of the beef but not too much now some people like to leave all the fat on but i like to take it off as much as possible fat is one of the first things that will go bad in beef jerky and even though i don't make this for long-term preservation i make my beef jerky so it's refrigerated i still like to get that off of there if it's too much see we've got a little bit on this side here again we're just going to go along [Music] follow that fat line [Music] and when we cut this up if there's any big pieces of fat on any strips that we're making we can cut that out then but right now this looks good let's get this piece done and like i mentioned i make this beef jerky to go in the refrigerator it is not for preservation does not sit out on the shelf people always ask me well how long does it last in the refrigerator i've only had it last five days before it's totally eaten so beyond that i don't know [Music] really want to get this little bit of membrane off here and we're going to lose a little bit of meat but that's a worthy trade-off now when i make jerky usually end up with about 40 of the beef so if you put in 10 pounds you're gonna get like four pounds at least that's my number that i usually get and it varies a little bit so here's our beef and what we're gonna do now is we're gonna put this on a tray in the freezer for 30 minutes to firm up that will make slicing it much easier as soon as that firms up we'll get out here slice it and then we'll make our marinade so here is one of our pieces of our chuck cross rib roast thingy and it's just firmed up you can do this without firming this up in the refrigerator or the freezer and your freezer may take longer this was in there for about 25 minutes actually but i'm going to go ahead and just start slicing this up i could go the long way here but i'm just going to go the short way [Music] and i'm going to go for you know eighth to a quarter inch thick here and it doesn't have to be perfect [Music] this knife is actually fairly sharp it's just you have to get through sort of that frosty bit after you've firmed it up in the freezer if you have a meat slicer you can do this on there too i do have a meat slicer but i didn't want to just break that out and have to clean it for slicing beef jerky when i usually do it this way see that's about what we're looking for right there just sort of that thickness really good marbling inside for a cheap cut of beef this is looking pretty good this end feels a little more frozen than the other end you can see it's actually slicing a little bit easier because it's a lot more firm all right i'm gonna go ahead and slice the other one up and then we're gonna move on to making our marinade so for our marinade today we're going fairly basic i'm just gonna add a couple things that i like and this is a good amount for that amount of meat that's about four pounds of meat maybe a little less after trimming i find you really don't need it swimming in marinade as long as everything gets coated and you rotate it a couple times because we're going to let this marinade overnight in the refrigerator and a couple times i'll come in turn it around mix it up a little bit just so everybody gets coated so we're starting with one cup of low sodium soy sauce the reason we're using low sodium is because we're going to be adding two different kinds of salt here today we're also adding a quarter cup of apple cider vinegar a quarter cup of bourbon two tablespoons of brown sugar one teaspoon of ground black pepper half a teaspoon of kosher salt and a half a teaspoon of hickory smoked salt this is something you can find in a lot of grocery stores or specialty markets it's just a salt which has been smoked and it helps bring some of that smoky flavor if you're not actually doing the beef jerky on a smoker and i'm not doing this on a smoker tomorrow i'm doing it in the oven using the oven is a super simple way to make it pretty much everybody's got an oven not everybody has an outside smoker i've done jerky on outside smokers before and it comes out great and i've done it in the oven and it comes out great so this is a half a teaspoon of hickory smoked salt now i just want to mix this up i'm going to start getting our slices of beef in here [Music] we're just going to get down here move everybody around if i wanted to i could put this in some ziploc bags but this is going to be fine in this bowl like i said i will move this around two or three times before it goes in the oven tomorrow so i'm gonna cover this it's gonna go in the refrigerator overnight and like i said i'll mix it up a few times and then tomorrow we're gonna get this in the oven at a low temperature it'll probably take four to six hours and we'll end up with some terrific jerky that we made from cheap beef well our cheap beef pieces that we're turning into some great jerky have been marinating overnight about 14 hours total time i moved them around twice just make sure everybody was getting a good amount of that marinade now we're gonna get them on this tray on this rack i have a backup tray also in case we fill this up a lot of times i will take the beef pieces and pat them dry before i put them on here that just helps speed with the drying process in the oven but i'm not going to do that today you can also do it just leave it on there it might take a little bit longer but it gives that marinade a little bit more of a chance to set on the surface a little bit more flavor sometimes i'm going to be doing this at 160 degrees in my oven today now some ovens will not go that low some i've seen are 170 or 175. i've done it at 170 on my smoker outside before no problem so if you have to go 170 or 175 it may just move a little more quickly you just got to watch it so it usually takes four to six hours to get to the doneness that i like i like a little bit of moisture left in there and as i said this is not shelf stable you can't leave this sitting out on the counter the way i make it that's a different process mine goes into the refrigerator i just grab a piece out whenever i want a snack and it's usually gone within a few days so i don't know how long it lasts beyond like three four or five days because it's gone by then but i sure do love it this way but you gotta make it the way you like it and follow the process that's gonna work for how you wanna preserve it so let's go ahead and get it racked up and get it in the oven [Music] definitely see i'm going to need a second rack here and that's all right and you can push them a little bit close together here because as they dry they're going to shrink up [Music] all right this rack is ready i'm gonna get the rest on another rack and i'm gonna put these in the oven as i mentioned it's probably gonna take four to six hours to get to the doneness i like we'll check them after two hours and just take a look see how they're doing [Music] [Music] so we've been going two hours now with our jerky pieces in the oven you can see they are starting to darken up starting to dry out but there's still a lot of moisture in there if you just press on these you just feel that they're like you know medium stakes so these clearly have more to go like i said it generally takes somewhere between four and six hours for these to get to the doneness that i like and remember i said you can turn them over if you want but if you turn this over right now you'll see this side is very different you can turn them over but by the end that's going to be fine and i also like to leave this top side without those sort of grill marks from the rack there so i'm going to go ahead and get these back into the oven and we're going to check them again in another two hours [Music] well here we are at the four hour mark and as you can see the jerky is really starting to get that darker color let's take a look at one of these pieces here and see how we're doing you can see even the back side as i mentioned has started to turn that dark color and i can tell this piece really does need a little bit more time for my liking so after having done this a number of times i'm thinking this is going to take about another hour to two hours so we're going to put it back in the oven and we'll check it in one hour and see how it's doing all right we're just at five hours now let's check this jerky [Music] this is what i am talking about this is looking terrific here i am liking that so what i'm going to do is i'm going to let these cool for about 15 or 20 minutes before i have a taste but looking at these right now i can tell you these are going to taste amazing [Music] so yeah that might seem like a lot of time to put into making this amount of beef jerky but when you make it yourself you control the flavors and it can turn out tasting amazing this is smelling pretty darn good right now so i'm really eager to take a taste and i'm going to do two different tastes here one of sort of one of the thinner pieces because i think a lot of people like thinner pieces of jerky but i actually like this thicker stuff and i'm going to take a taste of that too so first the thinner piece of jerky and i think i'm going to call this smoky bourbon jerky because of that combination of the smoked hickory salt and the bourbon let's see how we did i've used that marinade i made before and i have to tell you i think that's my top favorite jerky marinade the flavor on this is outstanding the smoke came through with that smoke tank result and the bourbon flavor that sweetness from it came through i'm loving this another thing about this so far is that's cheap beef now 3.99 a pound isn't necessarily the cheapest i've paid for beef but at this time that was the lowest price cut that i could get in my supermarket a lot of times that cut in normal times i would find for a dollar 99 a pound so 4.99 a pound if you're paying that and you're being able to make this much jerky the way you want it that's a fantastic price because what you would pay for pre-made jerky like this i mean easily ten dollars a pound so this is a really good bargain and now on to one of the thicker pieces let's see [Music] same great flavor as the thinner piece really good pull on it and that's one of the things i've always loved about beef jerky is that idea that grab onto it with your teeth and you tug and you rip it there's just something about eating it that way it just feels fun it reminds me of being a kid and getting jerky but honestly this taste surpasses any jerky i had when i was a kid [Music] do [Music]

Channel: Cooking With Ry

Views: 126,779

Keywords: cooking, cooking channel, cooking with ry, ryne pearson, ryne douglas pearson, jerky, beef jerky, budget beef

Id: eTTiOr53CeE

Length: 13min 50sec (830 seconds)

Published: Thu May 12 2022