Beef Jerky

For a while, the fiance and I have dabbled with the Paleo diet (okay, I've dabbled, he follows it much more regularly). While doing this, I realized that I have a huge love of beef jerky. The price of buying jerky, however, was not something I loved.

Thus, the fiance said he would start making me beef jerky from home and it has been delicious!

Ingredients:
1.5-2 lbs of eye of round roast
soy sauce
Worcestershire sauce
pepper

To make, quarter the roast into smaller chunks that are more manageable. Place the chunks on a freezer safe plate and let them harden. This makes it easier to slice them into thin strips (if there are extra chunks we give them to the dog as a treat). When the meat is frozen (we set it in freezer overnight) remove from the freezer and place in the fridge.


Taking one quarter at a time, slice them into thin strips about 3-4 inches long.

When all the meat is cut, throw together the marinade.

 For teriyaki jerky, we used soy sauce (about 3/4 a bottle), Worcestershire sauce (about 3/4 a bottle) and fresh ground pepper (to taste, I like mine with less pepper than the fiance does). Combine all the ingredients into a bowl and whisk together.

Place jerky strips into a gallon sized plastic bag and add the marinade.

Seal well and squish the marinade around so that it reaches all of the jerky.

Yum!

Place in the fridge overnight (12-18 hours) so that the juices soak into the meat.

When you feel that the marinade has settled well, remove the bag from the fridge and prepare your dehydrator.

The dehydrator that we have is a NESCO Food and Jerky Dehydrator  and has seven different levels for drying food.

Starting at the bottom level, place the pieces of beef, single layered, around the dehydrator.

 Continue doing this on each level until you've run out of pieces of beef.

Set the dehydrator to 160 degrees, sit back and relax! Your jerky is on its way!

You can vary the amount of time you leave your jerky in the dehydrator depending on the texture that you prefer. We left ours in for five hours (by accident, we had a meeting and forgot that we had left the dehydrator plugged in and they turned out a little too crisp for my liking) but next time we would probably do 4-4.5 hours.

When finished, we get a new gallon sized bag to hold all of our jerky in and keep it in the fridge. It makes a delicious snack for a fraction of the cost of store bought jerky.

Enjoy!