Make Your Own Beef Jerky! How to Make Beef Jerky in the Oven

[Music] hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com with beef jerky that's right i like my beef snacks like i like my humor dry a little spicy and hopefully grass-fed and if you've never tried making this at home before i think you're going to be pretty surprised just how easy it is so let's go ahead and get started with what's basically a simple two-step process we're going to marinate and then dehydrate so first up we're going to make our top secret marinade and by top secret of course i mean this is what pretty much everyone uses so we will start off with a whole bunch of worcestershire sauce nailed it and then we'll also add an equal amount of soy sauce so those two things make up the majority of this mixture but of course we're going to need some additional flavorings and seasonings so we're also going to add a whole bunch of freshly ground black pepper and some smoked paprika a lot of people like to use liquid smoke and beef jerky but i don't i'm not a big fan of that flavor so i'm going to go with the paprika which is going to give a more subtle smokiness plus i really like what that does to the appearance when this is dried so some smoked paprika and then we'll also heat things up a little bit with some cayenne and then just for good measure i also added some red chili flakes i'm using aleppo but any red chili flake will do then i'm also going to add a little bit of garlic powder as well as some onion powder and i said powder not salt that is just pure dried and ground garlic and onion and then last but not least we do need a little bit of sweet to balance the salt and heat so i'm going to add a little bit of honey so people like white sugar some people use brown sugar molasses things like that but i'm a honey guy and then we'll take a whisk and we'll mix that thoroughly and that is it for the marinade so that's what i'm gonna put in mine obviously if you feel like adding more exotic seasonings and spices into yours go for it all right you're the boss of how quirky to make your jerky but this is what i'm going with and once that stuff's mixed up we'll just set it aside while we prepare our beef which by the way is already done because we had the butcher do it for us don't try to be a hero and cut this yourself go to the butcher and tell me you want a couple pounds of thinly sliced top round and while you can make beef jerky out of just about any cut for me this one works the best it's relatively lean but does have a little bit of marbling to it it's also very affordable and because of the shape of the muscle the butcher's going to be able to do nice wide thin slices for you so i'm going with top round and of course on the blog post i will give you very specific specifications and then what we want to do is marinate our beef in that mixture for at least three hours and i do like to dunk the beef in one piece at a time so i know every piece is going to be coated because if you just dump this all in at once the beef can kind of get knotted up and folded up and you might get a section or two that aren't getting soaked as much as the others so i do like to make sure each piece gets an even dunking before the whole thing gets wrapped and popped in the fridge and by the way conventional wisdom is to marinate this much longer like overnight or 24 hours but i don't think that's necessary i actually prefer my beef jerky with only a three or four hour marinade which is another thing we're going to talk about on the post actually did an experiment a three hour marinated batch versus a 24 hour marinated batch and the results were fascinating so check that out and obviously if you want to save space you could transfer this to a zip top bag but i had room i'm just going to leave it in the bowl like i said for just three hours at which point we're going to transfer that onto some paper towels because before we dehydrate this in the oven we want to remove as much of that excess moisture as possible so place it down on some paper towel and then put some over the top and press down removing as much of that excess marinade as possible and then once we've dried off our beef as best we can we will transfer that onto a baking rack set over a sheet pan and you're going to want to arrange these so you can get on as many as you can without them overlapping now the edges can touch they just can't be on top of each other so just move stuff around until it fits kind of like a jigsaw puzzle or a jerk saw puzzle if you prefer and by the way i'm only doing one pan at this point because like i just mentioned i did want to experiment with letting the rust marinate overnight but anyway we're going to pan those up at which point we will place that in a 175 degree oven for about three or four hours or until your beef is completely dry and during that time one quick tip maybe once or twice an hour if you can remember just walk by the oven and open the door and air it out a little bit all right that's gonna let some of that moisture escape from the oven get some nice fresher drier air in there and like i said we'll cook that at 175 for about three or four hours until it's completely dry and looks like this it should really look like leather and not that new shiny fifty shades leather we're talking old shoe leather so this is what mine looked like after about three and a half hours as i mentioned earlier i don't like the liquid smoke i prefer the smoked paprika for the subtle flavor and i think it gives that surface a really gorgeous appearance so not only is this going to feel and taste good it should look pretty good too and of course once your beef jerky is completely dry it's ready to cut up and eat and i'm going to borrow a technique that i learned from my good friend whom i've never met almond brown who i saw use scissors to cut this up and i thought that's a good idea so we'll cut ours into some bite-sized pieces and that really was some delicious beef jerky just far superior and taste and texture to anything you're going to get in the supermarket and once we have that all cut up you can just keep it in some kind of airtight container so i'm going to use one of these latch top jars for a slightly fancier and more hipster-friendly presentation and no you don't have to refrigerate this because of the salt content and the fact it's dry this stuff should be very shelf stable and i know it's still a ways away but my wife michelle commented on what a great father's day gift this could make in fact let's take a quick poll of all the dads out there what would you rather get for father's day a tie or a big jar or this yup that's what we thought but anyway that's it homemade beef jerky virtually identical to what you would get at a convenience store except it has like 27 less ingredients alright so i really do hope you give this a try head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 3,025,339

Keywords: Jerky (Dish), Beef (Food), Oven (Culinary Tool), Food (TV Genre), Cooking, Recipe, snack, meat, paleo, high protien, chef, john, foodwishes, dried, top round

Id: T4IDl0ywnIs

Length: 5min 57sec (357 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 23 2015