By Dylan Clay
Learning how to make beef jerky in a dehydrator can feel like an involved process and while it is to some extent, it’s still rather simple.
This articles teaches you how to use a dehydrator alongside one of my favorite recipes – sweet chili beef jerky.
You want to use cuts of beef that are lean.
Good candidates include:
For this article, I used “petite sirloin steaks” – while these aren’t particularly cheap, they are lean; I also had them frozen in my freezer for 3 months so that’s what I opted to use.
The reason for the lack of fat is because fat won’t preserve well nor will it render. Rather it will go rancid quicker.
If my intention is preservation, I’ll even go as far as to trim un-rendered fat with kitchen shears.
Before slicing your meat into strips, you need to determine your taste preference. Meaning, do you prefer soft or jerky with a “tug.”
Personally, I prefer tender/soft jerky so I slice against the grain.
To illustrate with my meat, when I hold these steaks up, I can see the cross section and the “lines” running vertically.
That looks like this:
So I make my slices like this to cut against the grain:
If I were using a london broil, I can see the grain runs like this:
So I’d slice like this:
You get the gist.
Aside from that, it’s also recommended to slice around 1/8 – 1/4 inch thick.
The reason for this thickness is both palatability and it takes less time in your dehydrator.
The recipe in this article is based on around 0.5 – 1 lb of meat. I’d suggest sticking to the quantities I list and work in batches of 1 lb rather than attempting to scale the recipe.
Dylan’s Sweet-Chili beef jerky recipe:
Combine the above recipe ingredients and mix thoroughly.
Put your sliced meat into a ziploc bag followed by the marinade.
Roll the bag on top of itself to force air out and then zip the bag. I typically will double bag these because I’ve had too many times where marinade leaks in my refrigerator.
As we can see, the amount of liquid is perfect and there’s less air due to rolling the bag:
Marinate the jerky overnight – this jerky marinated for 19 hours and 27 minutes.
If you’re pressed for time, I always say that a minimum marination time is 2 hours – just purely from a salt penetration perspective.
Here’s the jerky the next day:
In order to do this you will need:
To start, set your oven to pre-heat for 350F.
1. Take out your baking sheet and cover the bottom with aluminum foil.
2. Put your oven safe cooling racks on top of the pan.
3. Take your marinated beef jerky out of the refrigerator and start placing the strips on top of the cooling racks.
When putting the jerky on the cooling/baking racks, ensure they aren’t covering each other and that they interact minimally.
I DO NOT believe in patting the meat dry with paper towel.
Remember, most if not all the ingredients in a wet marinade are surface treatments and will not penetrate the meat, if at all. Where-as salt can penetrate the meat.
Meaning, if you pat dry your jerky, all you’re doing is removing any potential for flavor.
4. Once you arrange the meat, find a piece that you left “thicker” during the slicing process.
Once you do, put your probe thermometer into the thick piece so that it reaches the thermal center.
5. By this time the oven should be pre-heated. Put the jerky-laden baking pan into the oven on the middle rack. Close the oven door and monitor the internal temperature.
It will take roughly 10 minutes for the jerky to reach and internal temperature of 158F.
6. During this time, start your dehydrator and get it to 131F.
Here’s the jerky after pre-heat treatment:
Once the jerky has been heat treated, we need to dehydrate it to remove moisture. I typically stick with 131F, but anywhere in the range of 130-160F is adequate.
When putting your jerky on the trays you want to ensure that none of it overlaps.
Here’s a good example:
After you get all the jerky on the trays, close the door and allow the meat to dehydrate.
There’s no set time frame for how long this process takes. With that said, thinner jerky will take less time than thicker jerky.
Typically what I’ll do is start checking after 3 hours or so (especially if sliced it thin).
For instance, most of the jerky in this article was done in 2 hour and 51 minutes.
Here’s a photo at this timestamp:
The thinner pieces I can visually see are stiff, and I already know from experience they’re done.
Where-as that piece in the very center between the two pieces, I know isn’t done and is likely rubbery.
All the jerky in this article finished at around 5 hours of dehydrating.
At this point, all we’re waiting for is the jerky to “feel done.” The most common test people use for this is the bend test.
The jerky pictured below is from a different article but I applied the same concepts to the jerky for this article.
Start by taking smaller pieces out that you suspect are “done” and allow them to cool, then bend the jerky. Upon looking at the cross-section you’ll notice a few things:
Jerky that has hues of red/pink, is not done and needs to dehydrate longer. This jerky will also feel “wet” at the cross-section or in some cases “rubbery.”
Here’s an example of hues of red/pink:
Jerk that’s “done” will have a cross section that’s dry and feature what I call “Spider webbing.”
Here’s an example:
For this article I had jerky pieces finish at around 3 hours, at 4 hours, and the rest finished at the 5 hour mark.
After the pieces of jerky finish, I like to put them into a sandwich bag with the top open. The reason for doing this is because I don’t want the jerky to create condensation in the bag and cause mold.
I know it’s also popular for people to put finished beef jerky into brown paper bags because the paper bag will actually further wick away moisture from the meat.
Personally, I prefer the sandwich bags.
Once the jerky cools, I force out residual air, close the bag, and put it in a cool, dry, dark place.
Typically, jerky doesn’t last long in my house. If you’re like me a small batch like this is likely to be eaten in 48-72 hours, in which case a sandwich baggy is perfectly fine.
However, if your intention is for the jerky to last longer, you could opt to use freezer storage bags coupled with food-safe desiccant bags/moisture absorbers. The brand I use for food-safe desiccant bags is Dry & Dry (their 1 gram packages).
If you want the jerky is last longer, use vacuum sealed or simply sealed bags with moisture absorbers.
Jerky stored in a freezer bag with a moisture absorber should last around two weeks in your pantry and vacuum sealed jerky can last up to 2 months.
Incredibly useful resource – I’ve saved this to use for all my Jerky endeavors. The sweet/chili marinade is also delicious and all those flavors pair really well.
Happy to help Jonathan! Glad you liked the marinade as well (it’s one of my secret recipes I’ve saved for nearly a decade).