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How to Make the Best Beef Jerky in

the World
by A Manly Guest Contributor on November 20, 2012 22 comments
in Food & Drink, Travel & Leisure

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Editors Note: This is an excerpt from Tim Ferriss new book, The Four Hour Chef.

An Introduction to Dehydrating Food

Dehydration is all about removing water from food. Doing this helps to preserve the
food (bacteria need water) and concentrate avor. Its a common misconception that
you need heat to dehydrate food. But low humidity, not heat, is the driving force
behind dehydration. Warming the air surrounding the food helps keep it dry, but if the
air doesnt move, the food will stay wet. So when dehydrating food in the kitchen,
make certain that air can freely circulate around it.
Sidenote: You can achieve the same preservation of dehydration by leaving the water
in food but making it unavailable to bacteria. Just add substances like sugar and salt,
which bind to water molecules and lock them away. Lox (salt-cured salmon) and
salted butter are safe to keep at room temperature for this reasonbut unsalted
butter is not!

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The Best Jerky in the World

Sometimes a survival skill isnt just about preparing for hard times. Six-time New
York Times best-selling author Neil Strauss learned this while writing about
apocalypse-proong your life in his book Emergency. Yes, learning to preserve meat
was useful. But learning to avor meat was an art.
In search of the perfect marinade, he polled everyone: hard-core survivalists, friends
grandfathers, chefs, and beyond. Then he split-tested the best and simplest recipes
that didnt require a smoker or a food dehydrator. He submerged near-identical meat
slices into 25 containers of marinade at a time. Sometimes he tested a dierent
brand or amount of teriyaki sauce, and other times he added a random ingredient like
true oil or mustard. It became something of an obsession.
The following recipe is what won all the taste tests.
This recipe is intended for home cooking, not for the wilderness, but it can be adapted
for the wild.
Hands-on Time
15 minutes
Total Time
15 minutes plus 24 hours for marinating and up to 24 hours for drying and cooling
Gear
Knife
Large container with lid
Aluminum foil
Wooden or plastic serving spoon
Ingredients (to make 2.3kg (5lb))
2 kg (5 lb) lean brisket
470 ml (2 c) Kikkoman soy sauce
470 ml (2 c) Worcestershire sauce (Neil likes Lea & Perrins)
470 ml (2 c) thick, avorful teriyaki sauce (Kikkoman Takumi Garlic & Green
Onion or, Soy Vay Veri Veri Teriyaki)
240 ml (1 c) liquid smoke (its not always easy to nd, so any brand will do)
120 ml (1/2 c) Karo dark corn syrup (you can also try blackstrap molasses)
3T garlic powder
3T onion powder
3T sesame seeds
3T brown sugar
1t cayenne pepper
PREP
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00
Put the meat in the freezer for an hour to make slicing easier. Slice meat with the
grain as thin as possible (less than 0.6 cm or 14). If youre lazy or not great with the
knife, call the butcher ahead of time and ask him to slice 2 kg (5 lb) of lean brisket at
this thickness. The leaner the meat, the better and longer-lasting the jerky.
PICKUP
00
In a large container, mix the 470 ml (2 c) soy sauce, 470 ml (2 c) Worcestershire
sauce, 470 ml (2 c) teriyaki sauce, 240 ml (1 c) liquid smoke, and 120 ml (1/2 c) dark
corn syrup.
01
Add the 3 T garlic powder, 3 T onion powder, 3 T sesame seeds, and 3 T brown sugar.
Throw in 1 t of cayenne pepper. Add more if you like it spicy, but a little goes a long
way. Note: cayenne pepper is also great for putting on a cut to stop bleeding, and it
doesnt sting.

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Make sure your meat is completely submerged in the

marinade.
02
Stir well, then drop your meat into the marinade. Your meat should be fully
submerged.
03
Optional: Sometimes Ill take a smaller container and play with a slightly dierent
marinade, adding in dierent oils, spices, and notes (even soda, wine, or beer) to the
same base marinade. Ill add in a little of the sliced meat for a batch of experimental
jerky.
04
Close or cover the container(s), then leave in the refrigerator for at least 24 hours.
05
Once the meat is well marinated, its time to dry it: Cover the bottom of your oven
with aluminum foil. Things will get mess

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The higher the racks are placed in the oven, the better.
06
Place the meat on the racks of your oven, one next to the other (see pic above). The
higher the racks are placed in the oven, the better. If you like, you can put the meat
on aluminum foil or hardware cloth.
07
Set your oven temperature to 70C (160F), or 80C (180F) if youre in a rush. Crack
open the oven door by sticking a wooden or plastic serving spoon in the top of the
door. Steve Rinella uses a crunched beer can. The goal is to dry the meat but avoid
cooking it.
08
Let it dry for 3 hours, then turn over the jerky. After another 3 hours, it should be
done. The total time, however, is dependent on the thickness of the meat and the
temperature of the oven. The jerky is done when its dry enough that you can rip o a
piece easily, but before it snaps when you bend it.
09
Leave meat out in the air to cool. It is now ready to eat. The longer you leave it out to
cool, the drier it will get. After no longer than 24 hours, store it in sealed Ziploc bags.
Without refrigeration, it will be good for 46 months.
Have any other jerky-making tips? Share them with us in the comments!
__________________
Available now, The Four Hour Chef by Tim Ferriss isnt just a cookbook (though,
youll nd plenty of recipes in it like this one for beef jerky). Its a guide on how to
learn anything (like cooking) as quickly as possible using a simple system Ferriss has
designed to master a wide range of skills.
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{ 22 comments read them below or add one }

1 Georey Kidd November 20, 2012 at 2:50 pm
Use a convection oven, although the foil lining part of the article is 100%
correct. Maxim makes one which you can take down to 110-120 degrees, but
either way, convection drying is a LOT faster because the air is being blown
around.

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2 SeanWB November 20, 2012 at 2:52 pm

Best post ever! Cant wait to make this. Store bought jerky is an atrocity.
3 Steven November 20, 2012 at 2:54 pm
Im going to do this for Thanksgiving. It will be my manly contribution well eat
it while we watch football (beats talking to my in-laws!).
4 Chris November 20, 2012 at 3:12 pm
theres a butcher/country store in South Georgia called Striplings that makes my
favorite jerky. The marinade is less soy and more black pepper. I wish I lived
closer to buy some and try to replicate it.
5 Ian November 20, 2012 at 3:15 pm
Better than using your oven (which no matter how well you control it will cause
your meat to cook), try this hack from Alton Brown
Software:
One batch of sliced an marinated meat (follow recipe until step 04)
Hardware:
1 box fan
2 bungee cords
Cellulose-based furnace lters (available at the hardware store)
line your meat in the ridges of the furnace lter (use as many as needed) and
stack the lters on top of one another. Then take an empty lter and place it on
the top of the stack. Secure your lters to the fan using the bungee cords so that
the fan will blow air through the lters. Turn on your fan and let the meat dry for
8-12 hours (to quote AB, your patience will be rewarded). When jerky is dried
out, place in an air-tight container (zip-top bags have the tendency to hold
moisture against the meat which will re-hydrate it) and consume at your leisure.
The only thing to note about this method, is that your living space will smell of
drying meat. If thats something you and your loved ones want to avoid, just
place the fan by a window so that its blowing out.
6 Patrick November 20, 2012 at 3:21 pm
Question: How do you do this without electricity? That would be useful after the
powergrid fails during the zombiepocalypse.
7 Paul Williams November 20, 2012 at 3:29 pm
Instead of putting the foil on the bottom of the oven, you can use a drying rack to
hold the meat and put it on top of a sheet pan. This has the added benet of
shielding the meat from direct heat.
8 Mark Ruddick November 20, 2012 at 3:39 pm
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The best meat for jerky is venison. I use a dehydrator, but the stove works just
ne. For the marinade you want something that compliments the meat not
smashes the original avour into oblivion. Good jerky is hard to keep in stock
between my daughter, my scouts and my friends.
9 Nick November 20, 2012 at 3:45 pm
A couple points from my own jerkying experience:
1) Brisket is pretty good, but Ive found that top round (or bottom round) roasts
tend to have less fat in inconvenient spots (I prefer leaner jerky).
2) If you maintain your kitchen knives properly there is no need to partly freeze
the meet prior to slicing. Just use a good sized knife (a sharp one) and slice using
the full length of the blade; dont saw the meat.
3) In my opinion, there is a lot of needless sweet stu in this recipe. The 470ml
teriyaki sauce is probably something like 60-100g sugar already. Add the 3T
brown sugar and 120ml corn syrup/molasses if you want candy, why not just
eat candy?
10 Richard White November 20, 2012 at 3:46 pm
Anyone have any recipes that dont include any soy products (allergens) or corn
syrup (enough has been said on this) or liquid smoke? Im looking for a more
natural beef jerky.
11 jonathan November 20, 2012 at 3:47 pm
alton brown doesnt use heat at all. uses cotton air conditioner lters strapped to
a box fan. set to high in the garage or hanging out a window for 12 to 24 hours.
worked for me.
12 Max November 20, 2012 at 3:58 pm
I normally like your articels but I think this aint the real stu. BEST beef-jerky
is natural or peppered. Way to many ingredients from my point of view. Greets
from Germany Max
13 David November 20, 2012 at 4:09 pm
Call me old-fashioned, but you really dont need to muck up your recipe with all
those sweet ingredients. The best beef jerkey Ive ever had is dry rubbed with
season salt and black pepper, thats it.
And there is simply no substitute for real smoked jerkey
14 Carlos Mora November 20, 2012 at 4:13 pm
My grampa and I used to make beef jerky now I have another excuse to spend
time with him
15 Chris November 20, 2012 at 5:47 pm

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I would really be interested in reading a follow up from Creek about Jerky

Making.
16 DJ November 20, 2012 at 6:18 pm
Brisket can be a little pricey. Top round or if you nd it on sale, eye of round is
just as lean if not leaner. Cutting the meat with the grain cannot be over
emphasized. If you cut it across the grain you will end up with meat powder.
My son and I love making (and eating) jerky together.
17 the barking dog November 20, 2012 at 7:35 pm
A coworker makes jerky using ground meat and an extruder. He adds awesome
avoring like bourbon and ghost peppers. Since he works the overnight shift,
when I come in in the morning and hes brought jerky to share, I get quite a jolt
to wake up.
18 Zsolt Beres November 20, 2012 at 7:59 pm
How about adding some Franks Red Hot and/or Tabasco sauce into the
marinade?
19 minuteman November 20, 2012 at 8:35 pm
Eye od round is a great cut to use. Its very lean and cheaper than brisket. You
want the leanest meat you can get because fat goes rancid, so the storage life
will be much shorter. If you have a good butcher he will take an eye of round
roast and slice it into thin pieces for you using the deli slicer. It does a beautiful
job and saves a lot of work.
20 Justin November 20, 2012 at 8:43 pm
I work at a local grocery store in the meat department. Id highly recommend
using eye of round as it is very lean and easy to trim the small amount of fat o
the one side. I actually cut meat for one of the regulars who makes and sells a lot
of his own jerky. Based on his experience (and mine), Id recommend getting to
know the employees at your local butcher shop and have them cut the meat for
you. They can be very helpful when trying to cook or prepare something for the
rst time. Also, if they cut the meat on a slicer instead of with a knife, remember
to ask for it cut with the grain and ask what setting they put it on after to get a
consistent slice every time. Trust me, its a lot easier to go in and say you want
your meat cut at an 18 than by trying to show with your ngers how small you
want it cut.
21 Cowboyup November 20, 2012 at 11:18 pm
Looks like a pretty decent recipe but rather than using the oven Id suggest
picking up a dehydrator for like 30-40 bucks and use that.

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22 Perry November 21, 2012 at 12:25 am

You guys here at AOM always know how to brighten up my day. Keep it up!
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