The other approach is to make up just enough marinade for the amount of beef you're making in to jerky. This is my basic jerky recipe, from which you can make all sorts of variations; this amount of marinade is sufficient for about 5 to 6 pounds of beef, which I find fill my Nesco dehydrator's eight trays fairly full. And there's only an ounce or two of marinade left over once I'm done. Guinness Beef Jerky Marinade 5 to 6 lbs lean beef, sliced thinly--see Note 1 2 bottles (12-14 oz each) Guinness Stout 2 tablespoons kosher salt OR 3 to 4 tablespoons soy sauce--see Note 2 2 tablespoons garlic powder 2-4 tablespoons hot stuff --see Note 3 optional: liquid smoke, 1 to 2 tbsp In a large bowl pour stout and add salt, whisking to dissolve salt and decarbonate the stout. Add the garlic powder and hot stuff and mix well. Put the beef strips in the marinade by handfuls, swirling around to make sure all surfaces have come in contact with the marinade. Place the beef in a nonreactive container (a stainless stockpot works fine), pour the remaining marinade over the beef, mix well, cover and refrigerate for at least an hour (more is better--overnight is fine). If you have time, mix up the beef strips every so often in the marinade. Place the strips flat on the trays and dry to your desired amount of dryness. I prefer crisp to leathery, but do it however you want. Note 1: Before slicing the beef, trim all extra fat off the surface of the meat. I like to use round roast because it's very lean; whenever possible, slice the strips across the grain. Slicing it with the grain results in a stringy final product. Eye of round costs a little more, but is very lean and also is very easy to slice across the grain, and that yields a less stringy product. Don't use a fatty cut of meat because it won't dry as thoroughly and won't have the storage properties of a leaner cut. (The fat can turn rancid.) Note 2: I have found mushroom flavored soy sauce at an Asian market. It works great in this recipe. Note 3: For the hot stuff, cayenne works well; you have to judge for yourself how hot your particular cayenne pepper is. (Mass market cayenne from brands like McCormick is relatively mild; powdered chili peppers from a Mexican or Indian market will be much hotter.) If you're unsure, go easy with the hot stuff. You can always sprinkle a little more hot stuff on the finished product if you wish. I have used chipotle powder with good results; 4 tablespoons in this recipe makes a quite hot product, and 2 tbsp makes a pleasantly zingy one. If you want something quite mild, use sweet Hungarian paprika which would make a product not at all hot but would still have a good flavor. You can also use smoked Spanish paprika ('pimenton') which comes in three degrees of hotness (sweet, bittersweet & hot). If you use that, though, or chipotle powder, don't use any additional smoke flavor. --Don't use a hot sauce that's vinegar based (like Tabasco or Sriracha)--the vinegar taste will be concentrated in the finished product.

Annie, I generally prefer to dry the beef rather thoroughly. It comes out actually a little crunchy, almost like a potato chip. Now a lot of people would prefer to dry them not as thoroughly so you end up with a pliable product rather than a crisp one. But part of the reason I'm on a jerky kick right now is that I'm on a low carb diet for the time being, and most crunchy stuff is verboten. I usually dry the stuff a minimum of 10 hours, usually overnight. Because the trays are a PITA to clean, I usually make several batches of jerky in sequence so I don't have to clean them between each batch. (The lazy way to clean them when you're finished: throw the dirty trays in the bathtub, cover with hot hot water, add a cup or so of chlorine bleach; in the morning you can pretty much rinse the trays off with warmwater, maybe having to use a bottle brush to dislodge any stubborn stuff.) A thin piece of beef, dried on the dehydrator overnight, ends up nice and crisp. I unload the dehydrator trays and reload them with beef that has been marinating in the fridge overnight; repeat this sequence until you have all the stuff processed. I just got an order from Penzey's, so this weekend I'll be experimenting with using their chili powder on jerky, as well as their curry powder. As I mentioned above, I'm storing the stuff in plastic bags in the freezer. I haven't added any cures like nitrates or nitrites to the mix, so I don't know how safe it would be to store this stuff at room temperature.

A lot of people do make pork jerky. I'll post a link below that explains why it was once unsafe. It goes right along with the old way of having to cook your pork to death. Because hogs raised in the dirt were easily infected with parasites. Most hogs today are raised differently and today's recommendations on cooking pork are much different. My thought is that it's ok. Others may disagree. The best you can do is read the facts and then decide for yourself. Here is a link that might be useful: Pork Jerky - yes or no?

Jerky is a much anticipated Christmas food gift around our house. I use ground bison and extrude it with a jerky maker. There is very little fat in bison meat, which is important when making jerky, or dehydrating any kind of meat. An important food safety note for making jerky... Meat and poultry jerky should be heated to 160-degrees F to destroy microorganisms. You can do this with a couple different methods. If the meat is marinated, heat the meat in the marinade prior to drying (bring to a near boil). The second method is to heat the DRIED jerky in a 275-degree oven for 10-minutes after the dehydration process. Always store it in an airtight container, preferable in the refrigerator, or in the freezer if you want to keep it longer. Dehydration doesn't prevent the fat in the meat from going rancid. I also cut COOKED lean meat into 1/4-inch cubes and dehydrate it. I store it in the freezer. I do a lot of dehydrating. It gets placed in canning jars and the lids vacuum-sealed with a FoodSaver and shelved in our food storage room. I just finished my last apples yesterday and have seemingly a "ton" of them in storage. Most of them were picked free - as well as a number of jars of free pears. I use dried apples as an out-of-hand snack item, pie/cobblers, added to quick breads and granola, and I also make it into applesauce. I'll be starting sweet potatoes for sweet potato powder tomorrow. I cook and mash the sweet potatoes, spread a thin layer onto fruit leather sheets and dry it enough to peel off the sheets. Place the sweet potato back on the tray and dry until crispy. The crispy sheets of sweet potatoes are placed in a blender and pulverized into a powder. To make mashed sweet potatoes, just add hot water and stir. When I find commercially frozen veggies and fruit on clearance, or greatly reduced, and I don't have room for them in my freezer I'll dehydrate them. I don't have a free-standing freezer, just my refrigerator freezer, so dehydrating these foods works very well for me. I no longer do home canning because it's not cost effective, so dehydration is my major source for preservation. Dehydration is a good way to preserve those fresh fruits and veggies that often "die" of loneliness in the refrigerator and are wasted, and to take advantage of food bargains. I paid 98-cents for a discounted package of fresh bay leaves and dehydrated them. It was enough to fill a pint jar. On sale and over-ripe fruit is quickly made into fruit roll-ups. These are used as snacks or you can make a fruit sauce with them. It's amazing how many tomatoes you can stuff into a quart jar when you dehydrate them!!! I purchase large quantities of nuts when they are reduced after the holidays. Nuts are easier to digest, have more available nutrients, and will keep longer in a cool temperature storage (basement) if you soak them overnight in lightly-salted water (they sprout slightly) and dehydrate them until crispy. The dehydrated nuts are also stored in canning jars with the lids vacuum-sealed on them. -Grainlady