easy, homemade, healthy beef jerky
When you’re in a rush and you don’t want to fill up with useless calories that won’t sustain your energy needs through a busy afternoon, beef jerky should be your go-to snack.Or when you're headed out on a long road trip or plane trip then beef jerky is the perfect compact snack to avoid fast food (and their nasty seed oils) and frequent stops.
Print Recipe
Equipment
- 1 jerky cannon
- 1 large bowl to hold thawed ground beef
- 1 Excalibur dehydrator (or your choice)
- 1 salt crock (or a container for salt)
Ingredients
- ~16 lb grass-finished ground beef (or your choice of meat)
- to taste salt
- to taste (optional) seasonings
Instructions
- Thaw ~16lb of 90/10 (or close to it) grass-finished ground beef
- Open a few ground beef containers and shape them into a small tubular shape that will fit into the jerky cannon.
- Place those tubular shapes into the jerky cannon and gently shake up and down to pack the ground beef
- Start at one corner of a tray and squeeze a long line of ground beef from top to bottom
- Repeat until the tray is full
- Sprinkle salt across all the columns (I do a couple of four finger pinches per tray)
- (Optional) Sprinkle seasonings to taste
- Place the tray in the dehydrator and finish all the other trays
- Set the dehydrator to 125 degrees for 26 hours
- Once finished, store the beef jerky in an airtight container and enjoy!
Notes
The USDA recommends heating meat to 160 degrees for safety purposes in a dehydrator. As you read the recipe, you'll discover we do not follow this guidelines as it results in more nutrient loss.
DEHYDRATE AT YOUR OWN RISK.
The leaner the ground beef the better. You won’t waste the fat calories (and associated dollars spent) with leaner meat. 90/10 is perfect.
Thaw your meat the day before making jerky but don’t let it reach room temperature. You want the meat to be thawed enough to where no parts are frozen and chunky but not too warm to where it’s super liquidy.