Here’s a beef jerky recipe I like to use, a little heat and a little sweet. We normally use hanging tenders but we had received a case of flank steak by accident, by the time I realized it it was to late to return it so I decided to make some jerky out of it.
I grabbed 3 packs of flank for a total of about 24 pounds of meat. It should totally fill up my dehydrator.
I assembled my tools to cut the jerky strips. I like the chain mail gloves, I have seen someone totally cut the tip off a cloth resistant gloves when they were not paying attention.
flank is a great cut of meat for jerky imo, it’s almost the perfect thickness and there isn’t a lot of fat to trim off
a quick trim of any fat and a majority of silver skin
there are two ways you can impact the toughness of your meat when you cut it up, one is the silver skin which is tougher than nails and you want to trim off as much as possible. The other way is cutting with the grain instead of against the grain. Think of muscles as a strand of rope with many smaller strands building it up. You can see in the picture below the grain of the meat running north and south.
if you cut with the grain you will end up with several long strand of muscle that don’t break apart easily. Instead you want to cut across the grain creating a piece of meat made up of short strings of muscle with just some connective tissue holding them together as seen in this picture
it took me about 15 minutes to trim and cut all 24 pounds of flank.
I assembled my ingredients for my marinade, I don’t get too specific with amounts because everyone’s tastes are different. Like it more on the spicy side? Add more chipotle, more sweet? Add more honey. The amounts I used was a bottle of soy sauce, bottle of teriyaki, 2 cups of worcestershire sauce, 2 cups of chipotle, 2 cups of honey and a quarter cup of granulated garlic.
I threw it all in a bowl and mixed well
poured it over the meat
and worked the marinade well into the meat
I covered the pan with a lid and placed in the refrigerator and will let it rest overnight, tomorrow I will throw it on the dehydrator
For a paleo version, skip the teriyaki
You can see how we dehydrated it here
