How To Make Beef Jerky With A Nesco Dehydrator

hey guys today we’re gonna be makinghomemade beef jerkyone of my all-time favorite snacks whencamping and something humans have beeneating for thousands of years so if youwatch my videos you’re gonna see thatnormally I bring my own beef jerky rightthat’s something I like to do for a fewdifferent reasons one it’s fun fun to do- you know what goes in it doesn’t haveto be loaded with sugar and all thatother stuff number three it’s a lot morecost-effective to make your own beefjerky than to just buy it 3.5 ounces ata time at the store so the meat we’regonna be using today is round I or beefround this is something I got at Costcothat cost 349 a pound so this five poundpackage cost us just under $18 now thereason I like to use top round is it’s alean meat to begin with the grain isreally well defined so that when we cutit it’s gonna make a nice jerky and it’salso very inexpensive as you can see 349pounds when it comes to cutting thismeat when it comes to actually slicingthat top round up there’s a coupledifferent options we have if you have ameat slicer and it’s available for youthis is the easiest and most convenientway to go if you don’t have a meatslicer you can just cut it by hand wehave a knife here I’ve got a cuttingcutting board and we’ll go through andcut some of this by hand as well so youcan see how you can do it if all youhave is a knifenow we’re going to get into theseasonings and how to flavour the beefjerkey this is going to be kind of aCajun based recipe there’s a bunch ofdifferent recipes we could do this one’sreally a crowd favorite it seems to bethe one that everyone likes the most andthe idea for this jerky originally camefrom my bodygreg:so shut out the Greg we’re gonnaneed four cups of water now we’re readyto add all of our seasonings in beforewe cut the meat we have our four cups ofwater here in this in this bucket andthis is not a bucket this is kind oflike a Tupperware container but I’mgonna do dry ingredients first and thevery first thing we’re gonna do is someTony sees some Tony can trees any Cajunseasoning can do this is just the onethat I use and it’s gonna be heavy onthis guy’s probably half a cup of Cajunseasoning total and when it comes toflavoring beef jerky remember you wantto go strong rather than light you wantit to be overpowering because you’rejust gonna have this meat in theremarinating for a little bit of time andyou need it to be strong if it’s gonnamake its way into the meat and thenyou’re gonna taste it latersome black pepper next thing is gonna besome meat tenderizer this is well I wasgonna say a dolts meat tenderizer butit’s not it’s just Kroger brandwe’re gonna do two tablespoons of meattenderizer this recipe that you’reseeing is for five pounds of meat so allof the ingredients you’ve seen they putin here is gonna be four five pounds ofseasoning or to season five pounds ofmeat paprika you want one tablespoonpure salt this is optional because we’redoing full mussel jerky out of roast ifyou are doing a ground jerky or sausagesyou would want to use this this issomething for safety but it’s alsocontroversial this is gonna be yourpreservatives its nitrates and nitritesI think it is but it’s also known as thepink salt so we’re gonna use half of ateaspoon a tiny little bit of this pinksalt cure it’s gonna make sure that anybacteria in here gets dealt with thatit’s safe to eat but also it’s gonnagive the meat or red flavor it doesn’tgive it a red flavor also it’s gonnagive the meat a red color that’sliterally all we’re throwing in just ateeny tiny bit now there’s not a wholelot of need for salt because we’vealready put in tenderizer and the Curesalt although a tiny bitty cure saltwhat I am gonna do is just add a smallamount of table salt for flavor so thisis all of our dry ingredients we’ve gotthem all in here now I’m gonna go aheadand whisk it up a little bit mix theseinnow I’m going to add a few wetingredients first it’s gonna be someworse this year this is really the tasteI’d say that’s about 1/4 cup this one’simportant I didn’t use liquid smoke whenI first started making beef jerky we’regonna be dehydrating the jerky todayliquid smoke real important componentout of tables or a healthy squirtalright guys that is everything so we’vegot our dry ingredients wet ingredientswe’re gonna go ahead and mix this up nowwe’re ready to go we can cut the meatget it marinating before we startslicing this meat up we want to do alittle bit of prep and I stuck this inthe freezer overnight froze it solidthen I pulled it out put it in thefridge for a little while so it could befrost slightly it’s firm still hard inthe middle but not completely frozenthrough the reason we’re doing that isit’s going to make it easier to sliceconsistently here in a second trim offany of this excess fat that we seebeing real careful with the knife ofcourseperfect all right so this is pretty muchnow trim ready to go we can slice it soif you do not have a meat sliceryou can do this by hand guys and youlike I said need to be very careful doat your own risk but with a nice sharpknife if you laid a crit against thesteak flat you can cut in and reallyfind kind of the width that you’relooking for then what I like to do isget my hand out of the way by holdingthat flap of meat and then justcontinuing to cut continuing to cut itso now what’s cool about this is you getpieces that aren’t uniform everything’scut my hands so they’re all gonna be alittle bit different let’s go ahead andbring our marinade and start throwingthem in there you can just continue tostart that cut pull it through now I’msure there’s better methods of doingthis but this works really well it’ssomething I’ve done time and time againit when you’re slicing meat for jerkythere’s really two schools of thoughthere and if you look in the meat and weget it a little closer but you can seethe grain running this wayyou write here everything is runningthis way the grain of the meat isrunning this way you can cut with thegrain which is how I’m gonna do this youcan also cut cross-sections or againstthe grain which is a different style ofjerky it comes out completely differentbecause the fat is layered in theredifferently personally I like to cutwith the grain I feel like the jerkyholds together better and it’s also abetter texture at the end when you’regonna eat so a meat slicer like this isa huge advantage like I said you canreally customize how thick or thin youwant your beef jerky you’ve got to becareful again use all the safetyprotocols at your own risk however byfreezing the meat slightly it’s gonna bea little more firm and we can run itthrough this very easily so a meatslicer like this huge advantage you canreally customize exactly how you wantthis meat to be slice as far as sizeand as you can see very consistently andvery quickly just pound this out allthat meat is now sliced I’ve got it allmixed up in here really well with themarinade and what we want to do now iscover it I’m gonna put it in therefrigerator for between really one hourminimum all the way up to 12at least somewhere in that range butafter now we’re gonna pull it outthrow it in a dehydrator that meat hasbeen marinating for two hours now it’sready to dehydrate and the way we’regonna dry this meat out is with ourdehydrator guys now there are videosonline that you can go to that show howto make beef jerky out of your oven putit on the lowest setting keep the doorcracked I’ve never done it that’s notwhat we’re gonna do today what we’regonna do though is take this meat startlayering it in the dehydrator and reallyjust trying to fit as much as we canportray stacking these up until theentire dehydrator is fullnow this particular model has atemperature gauge on the top or atemperature setting on the top I shouldsay and when I make beef jerky I’m goingto set that all the way to the top tothe highest setting which i think is 185so now that we have the meat dehydratingwe’re just gonna let it sit every twohours I’m gonna come rotate the traysput the bottom ones up a little highertake the top ones put them on the bottomafter six hours I’m gonna start checkingfor doneness I don’t want there to beany moisture and if I bend the meat Iwant to see the white of those fibersthose meat fibers when I bend it andfinish product look at this now you cansee there’s some of the fat coming upoff this you just want to block with apaper towel any of that fat that youhave and that comes right off but if youlook here finish product like I saidwhen you bend it you can see withoutit’s gonna break it’s not even bendablethat’s that’s dry and it’s good but ifyou look guys finished product this iswhat you get a lot more economical thanif you were to buy it at the store nowfor storage guys typically I’m justgonna fill this in the Ziploc and it’sgonna be gone so fast there’s no problemabout it going bad you can also vacuumseal it and freeze it if you need it tobut again guys thank you very much forwatching the channel homemade beef jerkyone of the best snacks you can makethank you guys