is it possible to marinate it like solid meat? ive tried the granular pouches and havent found any to my liking.

i like a smokey flavor with some bite. not a teriyaki fan though.

any recipes/suggestions?

Nesco makes an extruder for ground meat, so yes you can use ground. The gun makes strips or sticks of jerky, no reason you couldnt do the same by hand. Maybe place the meat into a pastry bag/heavy duty ziplock or make mini meatballs or footballs. If its not extruded under pressure it might be more friable, you would have to use your solid fruit roll up trays or cover them. I'd form it into uniform shapes or else you'll end up with beef jerky gravel. Nothing wrong with it, just dry & crunchy bits.

Most all of my recipes have soy sauce or tamari in them-too much like teriyaki? Cabellas High Mountain jalapeno flavor has decent heat and is a cure to boot.

This site has lots of recipes for jerky. We liked this recipe-tweak to your own tastes. It also has soy sauce, but you can search the site for alternatives.

T birds beef jerky

The dry seasonings will include a curing agent to cure the jerky. If you did a marinade/brine you'd likely want to make sure to include a curing agent like instacure. Not sure what sort of flavor you'd get or how long you'd need to leave it in the marinade/brine mix.

What dry seasoning have you tried? I know there are a ton of them out there so you could probably find one that you like after some experimenting.

If you want a smoky flavor have you tried smoking the jerky? Last year I ground up some venison and put it through the sausage tube on my grinder but didn't use any casing. Once I had the tubes of ground meat I just flattened them by hand and put them on wire racks. Half went in the oven and half went into my charcoal smoker with some apple wood for smoke. Both came out well but the smoky batch was far better. If I remember right I had them in for 2-3 hours at 175-200 degrees. Don't recall what brand seasoning I used but I believe it was a black pepper mix.

The other option is you could add a little liquid smoke to your ground meat. That will give you the smoke flavor you are looking for as well.