How To Make Homemade Jerky - Recipe

[Austin]

How To Make Homemade Jerky

Learn how to make homemade jerky with Walton's and Meatgistics. Watch the video, read the guide, and then post your questions or comments below.

What Is Jerky?

In a simple definition, jerky is just dried meat. Jerky can be a whole muscle or ground and restructured product. Seasoned strips of meat are cured and dried in an oven, dehydrator, grill, smoker, or smokehouse. Whole muscle is made by slicing a whole cut of meat into thin strips, while restructured jerky is a ground and formed product that is extruded into strips, by something like our All-Around Jerky Maker. Be prepared for a 50-75% loss in the weight of the product once it is completely cooked and dried. Use meats that are extremely lean, with as little of fat as possible. Inside round is Walton’s preferred cut of meat to use, and we recommend slicing against the grain of the meat.

Meat Block

25lb beef inside round (or other whole muscle meat)

Additives

1 package Excalibur Jerky Seasoning
1oz Sure Cure (packet included with seasoning)
40oz Water (8oz per 5lb of meat)

Whole Muscle Jerky Process

Mix seasoning and sure cure packet together. Sprinkle seasoning and cure mixture over slices of meat, or drag slices through seasoning mixture. After seasoning and cure are applied, place jerky strips into a poly bag and add just enough water to cover the meat, and help it marinate. Hold the jerky meat strips in the refrigerator overnight or about 12 hours.

Restructured Jerky Process

Mix seasoning and sure cure packet together. If not already using ground meat, grind meat 1 additional time through a 1/8in grinder plate, mix seasoning, cure, and water into meat until evening dispersed. Then, extrude using the All-Around Jerky Maker and Walton’s Sausage Stuffer.

Thermal Processing

Lay seasoned jerky strips on jerky screens or smoke screens and place in smoker, smokehouse, oven, or dehydrator to cook.
130F for 1 hour (open damper on smoker)
145F for 2 hours (2/3 closed damper on smoker)
175F until internal meat temp of 160F

Cooling

Hold at room temp for 1-2 hours before moving to the refrigerator/freezer. After we are totally done with the cooling process, then we will package in vacuum pouches for longer term storage.

Wrap up

It’s easy to get the basics on making homemade jerky, but practice does make perfect. Walton’s has everything you need (except the meat) to make great jerky, plus we have the knowledge to help you perfect your own process.
If you have any questions or need help in your process, please share your questions or comments below.

Other Notes

If your smoker, smokehouse, dehydrator, or oven cannot reach temperatures as low as 130F, just start as low as possible and slowly increase the temperature over time

Watch WaltonsTV: How To Make Homemade Jerky

Shop waltonsinc.com for Jerky Seasonings

Shop waltonsinc.com for Jerky Making Supplies

Shop waltonsinc.com for Dehydrators

[cwerts]

How do you keep it from being so dried out?

[Jonathon]

cwerts We recently did an experiment with this where we were trying to mimic popular jerky treats that are shelf stable but still very tender. The one thing we noticed from looking at ingredients was they all had large amounts of sugar, far more than normal jerky would have. We did a video and posted the results How to Make Tender Jerky At Home that explains it pretty well. If you are looking for a base seasoning to use Walton’s Bold Jerky was what we used and I think it worked the best of any of the jerky seasonings we tried. We are working with Excalibur to create a seasoning that would give you a similar result to what we achieved without adding any extra sugar, it will already be mixed in!

[exotic1]

Jonathon I was wondering the same thing. Thanks for the info.

[gusmanp]

I grounded 25# of deer meat I mixed in the Colorado seasoning in the meat and grounded it again but I didn’t add water first time using product from Walton’s do you need to add water?

[Jonathon]

gusmanp Sorry for the delay in responding. The only real reason I would add water to a restructured product would be to make mixing and extruding easier, other than that it isn’t necessary. When I make restructured jerky I like to use smoked meat stabilizer so I can go right to the smoker, and when using that you don’t really want to add water or it can gas out so quickly that it can cause issues.

Hope that helps!

[jason b]

when making restructured jerky is it needed to refrigerate overnight or 12 hours like it is needed for whole meat jerky? thank you

[Jonathon]

jason b Yes, if you do not use a cure accelerator like the Smoked Meat Stabilizer then you should hold it for 12 hours to allow the cure time to work in the meat.

[jason b]

Jonathon thank you sir much appreciated I will get some smoked meat accelerator on my next order!

[JerkyIsMySalad]

I’m going to start slicing and marinading some venison Jerky tonight. I am going to split 10 lbs of meat between sweet chipotle and colorado seasonings. Thinking about maybe adding some brown sugar to keep them from getting too dry. Any tips, ideas, or advice?

[PapaSop]

@kanevak
Never used brown sugar but have used a bit of white. Go for it. Can’t hardly goof up jerky.
I slice the meat 1/4 thick and against the grain. Makes for easier to chew and not so stringy product. Good luck. Shoot out some pics when done.

[Jonathon]

@kanevak Brown sugar is a good choice to avoid it drying out too much. Check out these two posts were we focussed on that https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/598/how-to-make-tender-jerky-at-home and https://meatgistics.waltonsinc.com/topic/1138/tender-jerky-using-home-equipment

You can add up tp 18% the products weight in brown sugar and 20% its weight in water, though at those levels it does get a little sticky! Good luck!

[JerkyIsMySalad]

Jerky is in the smoker but I’m loving my new slicer!

[Tex_77]

@kanevak what kind of slicer are you using? How thick did you slice it?

[JerkyIsMySalad]

Tex_77 chefs choice 615A. 1/4" thick. For some reason my phone isn’t letting me upload pictures

[Jonathon]

@kanevak The images are too big, when you go to post there should be an option on your phone to change the size, usually medium will do it.

[JerkyIsMySalad]

[JerkyIsMySalad]

[Jonathon]

@kanevak How much, if any, brown sugar did you add and how was the end result? Looks good for sure!

[JerkyIsMySalad]

I wanted to avoid too much stickiness so I did 15% of the weight in brown sugar and 20% of the weight in water. It was not one bit sticky. The difficult part is judging when to take it out of the dehydrator because when it is warm, it is much more pliable than after it cools down. Sweet Chipotle is a very delicious flavor! I can’t wait to try it with beef!