I received this food dehydrator for Christmas and have been researching making jerky on line. I found some good information and have come to a few conclusions of my own, but I’m wondering what you experts think.

Is flank steak the best cut of meat to use for beef jerky?

The instructions highly recommend heating the meat to 160 degrees to destroy any bacteria that might be present prior to dehydrating? It seems like a reasonable safety measure, but my question is; do you just put the meat in a pan after it has marinated, heat it up in the oven and then put it into the dehydrator?

Also, there are varying opinions on weather to add a cure or not. (Sodium nitrite) I understand it is not necessary but it seems like it would extend the shelf life a bit?

Any advice, comments and recommendation would be appreciated.
Thanks!
sb

My 2 cents on beef jerky
First comes the cut of meat.It doesn't matter the cut what matters is that there is no fat. No marbled beef or caps of fat on beef heading to jerky. I've used flank, chuck and just last week caught a cool sale on eye round that turned into some awesome jerky. All cheap cuts pretty much and with out that killer of good jerky fat. That fat goes bad quick and like one bad apple spoiling the bunch well you know the rest of the story

Ok now you've found a sweet piece of meat(god that sounds really gay) and the next big task is where most folks mess up. Cutting it into strips. Every piece of beef has a grain to it. In larger cuts that grain may travel in different directions. What you want to do is cut your strips across the grain. This may mean that you have to reduce your chuck of meat into a couple of smaller chucks. You should be able to get most of your meat done this way,the stuff you can't" Well it still makes awesome jerky too

Now that you've got more meat then most folks eat in a week sitting in front of you have to get it cut into strips. How thick a strip? Well that sort of depends on how you like your jerky and how fast you want it to dry. The general rule of thumb is not so thin you can read a newspaper thru it and not thicker then say a number 2 pencil. Ok where were we? Slicing your chunk of beef, right? The best way is to place the meat into a freezer and allow it to freeze a bit, but not freeze solid. This makes cutting your strips way easier then trying to deal with limp meat(ok you know what I mean stop smiling).

So now you've got your meat all cut up and you can add your own personal touches. You're at the stage of "pimp my jerky" and it's really a matter of taste. You can become a fundametalist and dry your meat as it sits or drop it into a plastic zip lock bag and add your own favor mix. If you want something favor wise you like grab a bottle of your favorite grilling sauce and dump it in the bag, zip the bag shut and toss it into the fridge for a day or so.

Now is another time before you add the meat to your drying racks to take a second and grab a can of cooking spray. Now why would I ever want to do this you ask? Simple unless you like spending hours trying to clean those nice new racks after making your jerky a quick spray is the way to go. You'll thank me later bro

Ok now comes all the worry part. You're thinking "man I want to impress all my friends with my really cool beef jerky making skills but I don't want them to get sick or die from some food thing because then I wouldn't be so cool anymore" I don't think anyone wants there 15 minutes of fame on the evening news because they created a bio weapon of mass destruction. So we start thinking about adding and that's where we you need to hit the brakes. All the heavy hard core thinking has already been done by folks for 1,000's of year before us. While we enjoy munching on jerky while cruising the outdoors making jerky is a time tested way of preserving meat. Unless you got your meat from some guy on the side of the road selling discounted meat you should be fine.

Hold on I see you raising your hand and yes I know that package of store bought jerk has nitrite listed on its label, but do you understand what nitrite does and why it is added to meat? Unless you're stocking up a supply for the next Y2K or end of the world party your jerky is going to keep just fine using a few rules. Keep it dry, keep it dry and finally go back and read rules 1 thru 2 again. I've keep homemade jerky on the Kitchen counter in a zip lock bag for a month. I don't know if it will last any longer then that cause we eat it all before then.

Whats that? "What tempture do I use to make jerky?" Well that's good question because a lot of the new dryers all have computer controls that allow the user to set exact temps. So if you needed a temp of 126.073 degrees you could get it. Jerky my friend isn't so picky. Early folks sliced strips of meat and hung them in the sun to dry or placed them on racks over beds of coals to dry. Taking a guess I would say that range could run from say 80 degrees up to 189 degrees and any where in between. Hold on I know, the new instruction books say heat to 160 degrees for "x" number of hours and in the strict food science rules they are right. What they are doing is nothing more then a sort of pasteurization. Like making jerky pasteurization has many paths from a fast heat up to high temputers to a longer heat up at lower tempetures. These guidelines (and that what they are) to help keep us safe are the same guidelines for cooking. Think of it this way a nice thick juicey steak is medium rare at 145 degrees that sits of a 500 degree grill for about 4 minutes each side. Cooked yes, preserved no. Make any sense now? So until you get the hang of your machine start at the middle and check your jerky every 2 hours starting and every hour afterwards for the first couple of batches until you get the feel for.

Finally while you're checking it at some point you're going to have to do a few more things depending on your machine. One is rotate the racks(top to bottom front to back that sort of thing to help insure even drying) and about half way through flip the jerky pieces over in the rack.

I have gotten away from the cuts of beef, and now use lean ground beef for my jerky. If you have a Mills Fleet Farm near you, they have many jerky spice mixes, and jerky shooters for a very reasonable price.
I can now make jerky in half the time and members of my party like it much better than my old recipes.

quote Frenchy: "I have gotten away from the cuts of beef, and now use lean ground beef for my jerky. If you have a Mills Fleet Farm near you, they have many jerky spice mixes, and jerky shooters for a very reasonable price.
I can now make jerky in half the time and members of my party like it much better than my old recipes.
"

+1

Thanks for all the detailed info HammerII!


I'll likley be using groud beef at some point, but want to try it with slices first.

Thanks!

I tend to make my jerky out of venison. One of the best things I ever did was buy a jerky gun and grind the meat. The ground meat takes on the flavor much better and with a jerky gun you get nice uniform strips that are easy to chew. I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin.

Ok, so I made my first batch. 3 lbs. of flank steak sliced across the grain. It came out very good considering this was my first go at it.

My question is; how do you tell when it is done without it being under done? . I let it go longer to play it safe, but am wondering if there are any tricks to knowing when it is done? (some of mine came out a little on the crispy side)

That a pretty tough question and the best answer I'm afraid is it depends. Since mother nature isn't uniform the cuts you're drying are uniform either, and even if they were all the same size, the amount of moister can differ from slice to slice. Once you get towards the end you can start checking and removing pieces that are done and leave the others for a bit. I start doing this when I'm rotating the trays.