Recipes
ByMerissa
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Follow this quick and easy guide to making beef jerky at home. This ground beef jerky recipe is much more inexpensive than the kind from the store and can be made with all of your favorite flavors and none of the hard to pronounce ingredients!
Table of Contents
The Best Beef Jerky Recipe
I remember the first time someone tried to give my little boy beef jerky from the store. I jumped up and said “You aren’t actually trying to feed that to him are you?” “Why not? It’s just meat.”
More like meat + chemicals + MSG. Enough for my poor little guy to get sent straight to the emergency room.
Beef Jerky can be a great snack. It’s high in protein and it’s easy to grab it and take it along where you need it. And just like many things made from scratch, it’s really not that hard to make your own and skip the high costs and chemicals in the store version.
–Find even more Snack Ideas on Little House Living!
My version that follows below is made with ground beef. I know you can make jerky out of more expensive cuts of meat but I can’t afford that. Using ground beef also allows this version to be tender and easy to chew. (Unlike some of that jerky that just about pulls your teeth out when you try to take a bite!) Make sure to use the leanest ground beef you can afford (I think we used 93% and still had a small amount of fat, but it’s easily wiped off.)
Ground Beef Jerky Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 pound ground beef (as lean as possible)
- 1 teaspoon of sea salt
- garlic powder, onion powder, soy sauce, or any other seasonings/flavorings
Directions
Start off by thawing your ground beef, if it’s frozen. Once thawed, add in the sea salt and any other flavorings you desire.
The seasoning for beef jerky is a “by-taste” kind of recipe so it’s best just to try your favorite spices, You can change it up with each batch you make to create your family’s favorite or divide your beef and try a few different flavors at a time. We aren’t big on spices so I only added minced onion and garlic powder to this batch.
Mix all the spices well with the beef.Place in a container and let it sit in the fridge overnight so that the beef soaks up all the flavors.
Remove the mixture from the fridge and place it on a flat tray in the oven. Heat the meat to 160 degrees. Remove it from the oven and let the meat mixture cool.
For this next step, you can use a jerky gun if you have one. I didn’t, so I used a plastic freezer bag and cut a hole in one corner so that I could “pipe” the meat mixture out. Place the meat in the jerky gun or bag.
Place pieces of parchment paper on top of your dehydrator trays. Using the bag, create your jerky strips or rounds. Don’t make them too large or they may not dry correctly.
Place yourdehydrator on 150 degrees and dehydrate for 8 hours. (You can also make these in the oven but they will need to be watched carefully since they will cook faster.) They will be more tender if made in a dehydrator.
Once the 8 hours are up, remove the jerky and store it in the fridge. This jerky will need to be eaten faster than jerky from the store because it has no nitrates as a preservative. If you want to save it for longer, you can always freeze it.
We think this is the best ground beef jerky recipe because it’s inexpensive and easy to customize when we want to change it up! I think next time I’m going to add some of my homemade BBQ Sauce into the meat and make BBQ Jerky. Yum!
Print this Hamburger Jerky to add to your Recipe Binder below:
Ground Beef Jerky Recipe
Ingredients
- 1poundground beefas lean as possible
- 1teaspoonof sea salt
- garlic powderonion powder, soy sauce, or any other seasonings/flavorings
Instructions
Start off by thawing your ground beef, if it's frozen. Once thawed, add in the sea salt and any other flavorings you desire.
The seasoning for beef jerky is a "by-taste" kind of recipe so it's best just to try your favorite spices, You can change it up with each batch you make to create your family's favorite or divide your beef and try a few different flavors at a time. We aren't big on spices so I only added minced onion and garlic powder to this batch.
Mix all the spices well with the beef.Place in a container and let it sit in the fridge overnight so that the beef soaks up all the flavors.
Remove the mixture from the fridge and place it on a flat tray in the oven. Heat the meat to 160 degrees. Remove it from the oven and let the meat mixture cool.
For this next step, you can use a jerky gun if you have one. I didn't, so I used a plastic freezer bag and cut a hole in one corner so that I could "pipe" the meat mixture out. Place the meat in the jerky gun or bag.
Place pieces of parchment paper on top of your dehydrator trays. Using the bag, create your jerky strips or rounds. Don't make them too large or they may not dry correctly.
Place yourdehydrator on 150 degrees and dehydrate for 8 hours. (You can also make these in the oven but they will need to be watched carefully since they will cook faster.) They will be more tender if made in a dehydrator.
Once the 8 hours are up, remove the jerky and store it in the fridge. This jerky will need to be eaten faster than jerky from the store because it has no nitrates as a preservative. If you want to save it for longer, you can always freeze it.
This recipe is a great way to use up ground beef from the freezer or to take advantage of a great deal at the store. Here are some other recipes using ground beef you can try too:
Frugal Ground Beef Recipes to Stretch the Budget
Must Try Cheap and Easy Recipes With Ground Beef
How to Make Make Ahead Meatballs
Does your family enjoy beef jerky? What spices and flavorings do you like to add?
This Ground Beef Jerky Recipe was originally published on Little House Living in January 2014. It has been updated as of January 2020.
