Making Beef Jerky at Home with a Nesco Dehydrator

everybody thanks for checking out my blog this is Justin I'm gonna make a basic beef jerky recipe today I got a decent sale on London broil which has been one of my favorite cuts of me to use for this mega jerky I've used bottom round and top round if you can find good cuts of London broil that aren't super fatty it's kind of worth it even if it's like 20 or 30 more cents a pound whatever because then you don't end up with tough bits or kind of kind of funky meat after you're done dehydrating so anyway this is basically a big old London broil actually two of them what I do first before I you know I go to the grocery store and pick this thing up bring it home and I stick it in the freezer for maybe an hour I don't want it to be totally frozen but I do want it to be kind of frozen so that it holds together real nice when you cut it and that's really gonna help you out making remotely uniform slices I mean it's kind of cool to have like rustic bits you know and different thicknesses I mean and you definitely get different tastes out of the texture but some consistency is good especially when you're starting off and you're trying to get a recipe down you're trying to get your dehydrator times down I worked it it just helps out because you know you know what you're working with basically that's what I do freeze it up for a little bit get the sharpest knife I have it's this an Elan sancto knife or whatever using a sharp knife I'm gonna save you a huge headache and a lot of waste of time and a lot of wasted bits of meat basically all you do is cut slices real thin I mean some places tell you a quarter-inch or third of an inch I don't really take out a ruler and do it but just show yeah this is probably the best-looking piece I just cut right now that's the thickness nice long piece whatever and also to just from from doing this for a while you don't want to use frozen meat I mean it's easy it's it's super easy to cut a frozen piece of a piece of beef with the sharp knife but once you put it in the bag with the marinade that stuff sticks together you're gonna end up with like maybe a third of your turkey getting seasoned so anyway butcher this stuff out let's see how many pounds we got here this package is a four pound package I paid 12 bucks for it and probably gonna yield you know two pounds of beef jerky this stuff dries out so much and that's the first step cut this stuff up get it getting thin like I said the uniform this doesn't matter but it helps when you're learning and starting off okay so come up all that meat we got a good pile here of of random thickness slices none bigger than a quarter-inch really and none too skinny because those will just evaporate into nothingness really so anyway I love these gallon ziplock bags for marinating I've also used Tupperware's Tupperware's are great but I have a couple of these that I just keep around and watch them out when I'm done and just make sure that I only put meat in them so yeah just put it all your bag this is gonna be your marinade bag situation that's what we look like with 4 pounds of wonderful oil not that this does really anything so anyway there's that also with the leftover pieces too sometimes you get little bits like straggling bits or fatty bits or whatever and you can't really do too much with them I cut them all up this is this is but I added to it today this is three jerky recipes worth of ends and bits I just Tupperware head put in my freezer throw out my next batch of chili once I got enough for what's this thing's full and it's correct it's a great way to not waste your money and make sure that you're eating what you pay for when you buy me because red meat has gone up significantly in the last she's 2 years since I started doing this ok so these are my basic ingredients that I use for my easiest recipe and my most reliable recipe that's actually my favorite and I always end up coming back to it after even screwing around other stuff so this recipe pretty savory pretty salty and kind of what I want out of the hydrated meat so I use in different increments and I'll explain that in a minute any kind of soy sauce you don't want you don't want the thick kind like sometimes they sell like extra thick it's kind of gross it doesn't it looks like it should work but it ends up tasting kind of foul boys sauce chili powder garlic powder just a little bit black pepper a little onion powder and some crappy or fine whatever beer I haven't really noticed that it carries through but the sugar in the beer really helps with the brining process when it really when it gets into the meat flavors it thoroughly and it's not and you're not just working with salt or sodium based whatever's so anyway it was about half a can of Coors Light whatever you need I've used paps type use Miller and whatever whatever is in your fridge drink half of it or have somebody in your family drink half of it dump that some about half of it in there for great you want to take your onion powder these about a tablespoon not a lot because this stuff can get thick and yeah the the powdered vegetable bits don't taste good when they're thick found that out a few times so black pepper copious I go like three tablespoons worth because you really want this to come out it's gonna cut the saltiness add a little bit of spice and it just makes it taste good peppers good and in about 1 tablespoon with garlic powder like I said powder and vegetable take it easy soy sauce like a third of a cup I don't know for this amount four pounds of sliced meat maybe more maybe half then your chili powder about two tablespoons of that you can get sometimes you can get really hot chili powder and if you like spicy stuff that's a great way to heat it up I've also done it where II I've run various peppers having arrows or Serrano's or whatever in a food processor and that's come out really good too I just don't have any now and frankly they're not in season and it's really not worth it for the amount of taste I mean if you pull them out of your garden awesome so you end up with a bag gross looking bag full of meat take the rest of that beer dump it on top just to distribute those powdered and grenades a little bit more then this is your baby for the next day I usually let mine go for about 24 hours maybe 18 you don't really want to go longer than that I I don't really know what it'll do other than potentially spoil grow a lot of bacteria it's gross well you're gonna want to do before you stick it in the fridge has really work in this is where I was saying before like if you use frozen meat which is super easy to cut consistently this mixture isn't gonna get to like 80% of it so you really want to work it you really want that to be in there good because you want consistent taste you don't want one piece that tastes like meat had one piece that tastes like really good beef jerky so anyway you have this this is gonna go in the fridge you can flip it over every couple hours mess with it rough it up beat it up but don't be it up too hard you don't to bust your bag because that sucks I've been there before anyway let this go in the fridge I'll be back in 24 hours to lay this out salt it and then dry it and just a side note sue this is a basic recipe there are millions of really good recipes all online I have a couple of them up my blog I need to revise them because I probably wouldn't make some of those earlier once again after more experimentation but uh you know you can use all sorts of stuff I haven't gotten into smoking it yet but a lot of people use liquid smoke if you like the flavor a lot of people use lime a lot of people use like straight-up chili peppers like like chili flakes that's good it's hot but I think this is like I said basic recipe easy stuff and be back in a day okay so it's been 24 hours since my jerky made it into the fridge I turned it around a couple times and basically this is what we're looking at right here doesn't look much different than when I put it in there so anyway this is my dehydrator it's an ESCO basic dehydrator this thing is great I love it when I first started making beef jerky I was messing around with an electric oven and wasted kind of a lot of power and time and meat because I could never get it right cracking the fridge keeping it or cracking the door keeping it on warm or whatever never seemed to work all that good for me and ended up cooking the meat more than it did dehydrated so pick this up thrift store is 40 bucks six racks does about this amount of meat will probably be filling it up with this batch today basically what I do I take out all the pieces spread them kind of evenly across the surface of these racks a little bit better of an angle some are stringy whatever anyway this dehydrator it's been great I use it for a lot of other things other than beef jerky I've actually ordered more racks so I can have separated beef jerky racks from my other racks I dried fruit did I did some chili chili lime mango slices the other day those came out great do apples pears some fruit raspberries strawberries bananas it's just a great tool it doesn't use a ton of energy it's kind of loud I think a newer model probably be quieter but uh but anyway yeah this is just the basic one you probably pick it up on eBay for you know 30 bucks extra racks are like 12 bucks for a pair for 12 bucks shift for a pair so anyway I got our meat here assembled in the traditional formation next thing is to aid in the drying process this is gonna take about six or seven hours in the dehydrator to get it to where we want it and sometimes if you have thicker pieces you're looking at you know 8 9 10 hours it's really get it dry so anyway aiding in the drying process kosher salt don't use table salt it doesn't cover the surface area the way that you want it to this stuff it's real flaky chunky and you don't need a lot but this covers a lot of area and doesn't make yourself too salty so just light light light dust all the pieces and don't tell your cardiologist that you eat this stuff often so anyway here's a here's one rack I'm gonna fill up the rest of these okay and just finished unloading all the meat onto the racks here for the dehydrator just to show you what I'm working on here from top down view I pack it in really tight because running out of space really is a drag and I've had to go back a few times before and you know really pack it in just so I don't have to do a split batch because like I said before this is gonna take about six or seven hours or this thing on for it to be done and doing that twice I mean this is already a weekend long process just makes it even longer so anyway grab the old top this is the model that I have I don't think it has a model number anywhere but uh it just kind of Nestle's in it'll fit snug if it's off you'll know cuz it'll kind of get wonky and let it go and I'll be back later tonight okay so uh our stuffs finally done the jerky was in the dehydrator for I let it go for about eight hours yesterday turned it off and let it sit overnight one of the things you should do too when it's done this is actually pretty warm inside and your meats gonna be pretty warm you're gonna want to let it cool cool down completely to like room temperature before you store it just to avoid condensation and anything in there that might potentially spoil your finished product so uh pop the lid I feel like I said before I fill all the racks this was probably the lightest rack and this is kind of what our finished product here it looks like rustic II artisan looking beef jerky so there it is I tasted a couple pieces during the cooking like later you know not like while it's still raw but um but later and you really want to look for a consistency that's kind of hard but not like chewing gum like this stuff will be in like kind of a tacky chewing gum consistency for like two or three hours of the cooking so wait till that's done wait till it's dry to the touch on the top and also you'll you'll see like something else to look out for this is like what white fat or silver skin ends up looking like if you leave it on there you know it won't kill you to eat it but that stuff won't ever completely dehydrate and can contain some bacteria so if you got a lot of fatty pieces like that you might want to not keep this in your pantry and you might want to put it in your fridge or trim it post your call but anyway you can go through my racks here and pile it in and probably fill up this Tupperware container and thanks for watching the video even if you have any questions I'll put the recipe on right after this footage is done but like I said before simple beef jerky recipe using nesco be hydrator and piece of London broil thanks so much I almost forgot the most important part um this is how much I got out of that batch so I don't know what the gallon capacity is this is roughly 2 pounds beef jerky you got this and a ziploc bag pretty full but yeah good yield for 4 pounds of meat probably have it for a while to share with my family my friends take it fishing take it out of the woods eat it wherever take it to work it's great stuff thanks again you

Channel: Justin Hawthorne

Views: 183,928

Keywords: cooking, beef jerky, recipe, how to, home made, beef, dehydrator, drying, preserving

Id: JgpTBbGwBkQ

Length: 17min 47sec (1067 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 26 2011