There are two main types of jerky: whole muscle a/k/a sliced jerky, and ground meat jerky. In whole muscle jerky, a hunk of meat is cut into slices – say, 1/4” thick – and then marinated, or packed with dry cures and seasonings, for an extended period before being dried. The resulting product is often irregular, because of the shape of the original roast or other cut of meat. If cut with the grain, as traditional, it’s pleasantly chewy; if cut across the grain, it’s much more crumbly.

Ground meat jerky, as you’ve no doubt figured out, is made from ground meat. The meat is mixed with seasonings and cures and then shaped into strips or sticks before being dried.

Each has its own good and bad points. Ground meat jerky is quick and inexpensive, and it can be made, if you’re careful, into uniform pieces. It’s easier to chew than traditionally-made whole muscle jerky. Dehydrators often come with a packet or two of ground meat jerky seasoning, and so ground meat jerky may be the very first kind that most people make.

On the down side, ground meat carries slightly more risk of contamination. As I said in the first post of this series, I’ve never had a problem with jerky, my own or anyone else’s, and I wouldn’t be telling you how to make it if I thought it was at all dangerous. But, as with any human activity, you need to know the risks and do what is reasonably possible to reduce them.

The trouble is that many (not all) of the microorganisms that can cause problems with meat are aerobic. They thrive in the presence of oxygen. They tend to live on the outside of a piece of meat. That’s why you can serve a steak rare with little hesitation; by searing the outside, you’ve taken care of most of the potential problems.

But the process of grinding up meat mixes air and microorganisms all through it. In the unlikely event that the meat is contaminated, grinding it makes the situation worse by aerating and redistributing. So you have to be more careful with ground meat. (That’s why some restaurants which will cook you a rare steak won’t cook you a rare burger.)

When I make whole muscle jerky, I use a marinade, and I can have fun adjusting and tweaking the ingredients, within certain limits. But when I make ground meat jerky, I tend to use commercial jerky seasonings. These seasonings contain not only salt and sugar (which have their own preservative effect) but also sodium nitrite, a preservative which helps kill some types of microorganisms. Sodium nitrite can be toxic in high amounts, so you should never add more than called for in the instructions. If the instructions call for one packet per pound of meat, and you’re only using half a pound of meat, don’t use the whole cure packet. Nitrites are used in a number of processed meats, not only for their preservative qualities but because they preserve a reddish or pinkish color which is desired in some types of meat products. Ground meat jerky made with a nitrite cure is noticeably more reddish in color than whole muscle jerky made without it. Nitrite also helps inhibit rancidity, making meat products last longer.

Most commercial seasoning products come in two parts – the seasonings are kept separate from the cure (which is a very tiny amount of nitrites bulked up with salt and sugar). When you get ready to make the jerky, the two components are mixed together in the proper proportions right before they are added to the meat.

There are some recipes for ground meat jerky cure which use Morton’s Tender Quick, a nitrite / nitrate cure mixed with salt and sugar.

As best I can tell from online research, the worst aspect of nitrites is that they can turn into chemicals called nitrosamines when cooked at high heat, especially when meat is charred or overcooked. Nitrosamines have been linked with cancer. But jerky isn’t cooked at high heat, and so nitrosamines should not be an issue. The University of Georgia’s National Center for Home Food Preservation says that nitrites are safe for use in curing and smoking. The University of Minnesota Extension says you get more nitrite in your diet from vegetables than from processed meats, and also downplays the nitrosamine threat. Even so, nitrite cures should be used carefully, only according to the manufacturer’s directions. Also, I am not a physician, chemist or medical researcher, and I should not be the final word on any of these issues.

If you’re hesitant, and want to avoid using a nitrite cure, you can always consider grinding your own meat just before making the jerky, or getting your ground meat from a trusted butcher or the processor used by your local cattle farmers. You can get crank-style meat grinders, or if you have a big KitchenAid stand mixer, you can get a meat-grinder attachment for it.

Wherever you get your ground meat, you need it to be as lean as humanly possible. In any kind of jerky, fat is the enemy. Fat picks up off flavors and goes rancid long before muscle does, limiting the jerky’s shelf life. In a steak or a burger, the fat is an important flavor component, and so well-marbled beef is desirable. But for jerky, fat is harmful and unnecessary. Leaner is better. If your supermarket sells “diet lean” ground beef, that’s what you want. If you decide to grind your own, start with the leanest cuts possible and trim them completely of fat.

The jerky seasoning mixes that come with your dehydrator are often also sold separately near the dehydrator on store shelves. They’re fine, but somewhat ordinary. NESCO’s seasoning products are now provided by a company called Open Country Campware, and you can order refills and a variety of other flavors from the company’s web site. I don’t know whether this is a new alliance or whether Open Country has been providing the product all along and is only now getting some credit for it, and the ability to deal directly with customers. I haven’t tried any of Open Country’s other flavors.

When it comes to commercial jerky seasonings, my hands-down recommendation is Hi Mountain Jerky Seasonings. I’ve tried several of their flavors, and they’re all delicious. You can sometimes find them at Walmart, but in the grocery section, not near the dehydrators or the NESCO/Open Country product. Some outdoor sporting goods places also carry them. You can order them online, from the manufacturer or from Amazon.com. A box includes bulk packets of the seasoning and the cure, plus a little shaker bottle in which you can mix the two as needed. Hi Mountain also includes directions for using the dry cure to season sliced jerky. You sprinkle the seasoning/cure mixture liberally over the strips of meat, pack them together and wrap the pile tightly in plastic wrap, keeping out as much air as possible. You keep the meat in the refrigerator for 24 hours while the dry seasoning penetrates it. Note, however, that the ratio of seasoning to cure for sliced jerky is slightly different from the ratio for ground meat jerky. They have clear and detailed instructions for each.

The NESCO/Open Country product can also be used to season sliced jerky, but their instructions call for dissolving it in water, turning it into a liquid marinade.

When making ground meat jerky, you must be certain to thoroughly mix the seasoning and cure throughout the meat. The best tools for doing this are clean hands. When making burgers or meatloaf, you’re sometimes cautioned not to overwork the ground beef, or it will dry out. Obviously, that’s not a concern here — the meat is going to dry out regardless! — and it’s critical that every part of the meat be properly seasoned and cured, and that there are no little clumps of seasoning or cure lurking about as unhappy surprises. Mix thoroughly (and then wash your hands).

One advantage of ground meat jerky is that you can put it into the dehydrator immediately after adding the cure and seasonings. You don’t have to wait for the marinade or cure to penetrate the meat, as you do when making sliced jerky. Hi Mountain does recommend letting the ground meat mixture rest for an hour before dehydrating, but I’ve ignored this advice with no ill effect. I also don’t like Hi Mountain’s suggestion of adding a little ice water to the ground meat along with the jerky seasoning. They say it reduces shrinkage, but I think it also changes the jerky’s texture and thickness.

In yesterday’s installment on jerky-making equipment, I discussed the jerky gun which you can use to produce uniform strips of ground meat jerky, and I strongly recommend it. You can make the jerky in strips or sticks. Keep in mind, as I’ve already stated, that if you produce sticks, they will be sticks of jerky, and not Slim Jims. Slim Jims are a form of sausage, containing a lot of fat and with a soft, mushy texture once you get through the casing. A stick of jerky produced in that same diameter will be a lot firmer and chewier than a Slim Jim is. I like Slim Jims as much as the next guy, but they are not jerky, and (due to the fat) they’re a lot worse for you than jerky.

As ground meat jerky dries, beads of grease will sometimes form on the surface, especially if you’re using something other than the very leanest ground meat. When you check on the jerky from time to time, you can blot these beads off with a paper towel as it dries. Also be sure to do this at the end of drying, before the jerky cools off. You may want to layer the warm jerky on a couple of layers of paper towel, then cover them with a few layers, some more jerky, some more paper towels, and so on. Press down on the stack to make sure the paper towel makes good contact with the jerky and blot up as much of the grease as possible while it’s warm and easy to absorb.

To test for doneness, take a piece out of the dehydrator and let it cool completely before checking it. Ground meat jerky should not be limp or squishy, nor should it be rock-hard. If you fold a piece in half, it should crease but not break. It should be chewy and no longer moist.

I still remember when some friends got their first dehydrator and eagerly gave me a sample of their jerky – which was way underdone, still quite soft. I ate it, but I didn’t like it.

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about whole muscle jerky.

• Part 1: An Overview
• Part 2: A Good Day To Dry
• Part 3: The Daily Grind
• Part 4: Slice of Life
• Part 5: Wrapping Up

Can you make jerky without a dehydrator? Yes, you can. You can use a smoker, for one thing – but if you have a smoker, you probably already know a lot more than I do about its capabilities. But there are also other ways.

One way to make jerky is in the oven. Depending on the type of jerky you’re making, you can lay the strips horizontally across your oven racks, or use skewers to dangle them vertically between the rungs of a rack. There are also specially-made racks designed for hanging jerky in an oven.

The oven is kept at a very low temperature, and the door is usually propped open to allow moisture to escape.

Another method is the one demonstrated by Alton Brown on his Food Network series “Good Eats.” Alton does not like using heat on his jerky – he prefers the rare flavor to the cooked flavor. But regular dehydrators, if you ran them on a low-temperature setting, just don’t have enough power to dry the meat quickly with air power alone. And it’s important to dry the meat as quickly as you can in order to prevent spoilage. Alton’s solution is to use inexpensive furnace filters, connected by bungee cord to a box fan. I’ve wanted to try this ever since I first saw Alton do it on TV. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m going to one of these days.

Here, from the Food Network web site, is a heavily-edited version of that episode of “Good Eats,” including Alton’s marinade recipe (which we’ll revisit in a later installment) and a look at his ingenious drying system.

So there are alternatives to a dehydrator. But I like my dehydrator – and I can use it not only for beef jerky, but for things like apple chips or banana chips. If I have extra onions, I can dry them. I can make fruit leather (a homemade version of the product sold in stores as Fruit Roll-Ups). For some people, a dehydrator is a kitchen gimmick. For me, it’s a useful tool, although I probably don’t use it as often as I ought.

Dehydrators are available year-round at Walmart – but at Christmastime, they generally have a larger selection. That’s not necessarily a good thing, because some of the added options are super-low-cost dehydrators in the $30 range. These do not have temperature controls. If you see a dehydrator without a temperature control, you know it’s set hot – for jerky-making. In fact, some are now set a few degrees higher than they used to be in order to hit the USDA-recommended temperature of 160 degrees for jerky-making.

The trouble is that without a temperature control, the dehydrator will be less-than-perfect for other tasks – banana chips, apple chips, herbs, fruit leathers and what have you. The packaging may claim the cheap dehydrator will still be versatile enough to do all those things, but trust me – they won’t turn out as well without the proper temperature setting for each job. And if you only use the dehydrator for jerky, it becomes a gadget instead of a tool. Spend a few dollars extra and get a dehydrator with a variable temperature setting.

I can’t give you a comprehensive comparison of various dehydrators; I’ve only owned three, and two of them have been essentially the same model. So please don’t take this as a comprehensive review. Also, let me say that this is not any sort of sponsored post and I have no connection to NESCO/American Harvest. (This site is a member of the Amazon Affiliates Program, and I’m including affiliate links for some of the mentioned products, but that won’t influence my reviews.)

Many of the more expensive, high-end dehydrators have trays in the form of drawers. I’ve not used one of these. All of my dehydrators have been the kind with stackable trays. The benefit of this is that the size of the dehydrator changes with the amount of jerky or other product you are drying. Check online before you buy – find out how many trays the dehydrator comes with and how many it will support. For example, my current dehydrator – a Nesco FD-60 Snackmaster Express – comes with four trays, but it’s powerful enough to work with as many as 12 trays. My previous dehydrator was also an FD-60, and I still have two trays from that one, so I can run with as many as six trays. The trays can also be bought as expansion kits.

The trays in the FD-60 use a plastic grate. I believe some of the higher-end dehydrators use screens.

The trouble with the plastic trays, as I discovered, is that they’re fragile. If you scrub them too hard, they’ll crack – and, eventually, break. I had so many broken trays that replacing them would have cost nearly as much as buying a brand new FD-60. I’ve learned my lesson. The owner’s manual to the new FD-60 advises you to simply soak the trays in soapy water, and then use a soft brush only if absolutely necessary to remove a few stubborn bits of stuck-on food. You can wash the trays in a dishwasher (which I don’t have), as long as you remove them before the drying cycle.

I think my two surviving “old” trays were actually expansion trays I bought separately, and so they were slightly newer than the others.

The FD-60 has the fan and heating element on top of the stack; some other units have it on the bottom. One benefit to having the motor on top is that there’s no way for wet items to drip into it, but I don’t think it’s a major issue either way. NESCO claims its trays force the air to blow horizontally across each tray, preventing the air streams from various trays from mixing together, and allowing you to dry various types of items together at the same time. I haven’t really tried this much, and there are limits to it anyway because, as previously noted, different items may require different temperatures anyway. NESCO also claims its system eliminates the need to rotate trays. Some dehydrators that blow vertically tend to give more attention to the trays closest to the motor, and so occasionally you have to shuffle the trays in order to ensure even drying.

Many dehydrators, including the FD-60, come with a fruit leather tray, a plastic sheet that’s used for drying fruit leathers into Fruit Roll-Up-style snacks. Just as with the trays, you can also buy additional sheets separately.

In a future post, we’ll talk about the differences between whole muscle (sliced) and ground meat jerky. But since we’re talking about equipment here, I’ll go ahead and mention another jerky accessory: a jerky gun. Depending on your interests or background, I can compare this to either a) a caulking gun or b) a cookie press. It’s a ratchet-driven gun that you use to extrude seasoned and cured ground meat into a thin strip for jerky-making. It’s the best way to make ground meat jerky. If you don’t have one, you can roll out the ground meat between sheets of wax paper, then cut it into individual strips, but it’s tricky to move the strips of jerky from a countertop or table onto the dehydrator without them falling apart. With the jerky gun, you can just extrude the strips directly onto the tray – no transportation necessary. The gun comes with tips to produce various types of strips (or even sticks, which will look like Slim Jims but have a completely different consistency). If you do have a cookie press, of course, you may have an existing die or nozzle that will work.

If you prefer whole muscle jerky, Hi Mountain Jerky makes an ingenious cutting board with a recessed inset which allows you to slice the meat at a consistent thickness. You set the piece of meat in the inset, then rest the knife blade on the raised edges on either side and draw it across horizontally, making a slice off the bottom exactly as thick as the recess is deep. There’s a 1/4” recess on one side of the board and a 3/8” recess on the other, so you can pick the size jerky you want to make. I haven’t used it, but it seems like a great idea. When you’re dehydrating jerky – or most other things – consistent thickness is important because it means everything will get done at the same time.

Now that we’ve talked about equipment, in the next installment we’ll talk about actually making jerky.

• Part 1: An Overview
• Part 2: A Good Day To Dry
• Part 3: The Daily Grind
• Part 4: Slice of Life
• Part 5: Wrapping Up

Regular readers of this blog are used to hearing about my jerky-making. I thought it would be fun to take some of what I’ve learned over the years, along with links to people who know a lot more than I do, and put all of the information in one place. So this is the first of a special series of jerky-related posts, which I hope will be interesting and useful.

I love jerky. What’s not to love? It’s salty, and smoky, and chewy, and (often) peppery, and just generally a wonderful snack. When properly made, it’s low-fat and high-protein (it’s nowhere near low-sodium, of course, so you can’t exactly call it health food).

Multiple sources I’ve found online suggest that the word “jerky” came from the Quechua word “ch’arki,” which the Spanish invaders turned into “charque.” Jerky began with the native Americans, and it was a way of preserving meat and making it easily transportable. Today, we think of salt and smoke as flavor elements, but the salt is actually there as a preservative, and the early jerky was dried over a fire, the smoke helping to keep away insects. Even the peppery flavor of jerky may relate to ancient people recognizing capsaicin’s natural anti-microbial properties.

In its finished form, jerky is well-preserved because it’s a quite inhospitable place for microbes. There’s little moisture, and that moisture is a hyper-saturated syrup of salt, sugar, and possibly other ingredients such as nitrite cures. The trouble comes in getting a nice, refrigerated piece of raw meat from point A to point B in a safe manner while preserving the expected flavor profiles. Jerky-making takes time, and time increases the risk of spoilage if you don’t handle the meat correctly.

There are differences of opinion about what’s safe and what’s tasty. The USDA insists that jerky be heated to a minimum of 160 degrees, essentially cooking it, before it is dried. But some sources, such as wildlife writer A.D. Livingston and Food Network personality Alton Brown, say that the flavor of cooked jerky is different and that carefully-sourced and carefully-handled meat can be dried at lower temperatures to preserve more of the rare beef flavor.

Jerky’s been around for ages, but its renewed popularity in the past decade or two stems from high-protein diet fads and from the easy availability of electric dehydrators. I use a dehydrator to make jerky, and so that’s most of what I’ll talk about here, but there are other methods, and I’ll mention them as well.

Making your own jerky has several advantages. It’s fun; it costs a lot less per ounce than store-bought jerky (although you may end up eating more of it, which eliminates some of the savings), and it lets you control flavors and ingredients.

First, let’s define what jerky is. Jerky can be made from a variety of meats, not just beef and venison. The selection of usable meats increases if you’re willing to cook the meat before drying it. Beef, of course, is readily available everywhere, and venison jerky is popular because it gives hunters a way to dispose of excess meat. A couple of years ago, a high-school classmate of mine had a large amount of venison and offered, if I would make it into jerky, to let me keep half of the finished product. I’d have done it as a favor to him, although I much prefer beef jerky to venison jerky. In any case, he never followed through.

Most of what I’ll write here applies equally well to beef and venison jerky, so if you’ve got venison, you’re in business.

Jerky, in its simplest form, is meat that has been flavored and/or cured, and then dried. It does not have to be — and should not be — completely dessicated or rock-hard. It should have enough moisture to remain chewable.

Beef sticks, like Slim Jims, are not beef jerky. They’re a form of sausage, made with a casing, and are much higher in fat than jerky. Jerky-makers try to avoid fat as much as possible.

There are two different types of jerky: whole muscle, or sliced, jerky, and ground meat jerky. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages, which we’ll explore.

That’s a quick overview to get us started. In the next installment, I’ll talk about equipment.

• Part 1: An Overview
• Part 2: A Good Day To Dry
• Part 3: The Daily Grind
• Part 4: Slice of Life
• Part 5: Wrapping Up

I found a type of lean roast with lengthwise grain – perfect for jerky, but normally too expensive – on sale for half price at the grocery store today.

The jerky is in my dehydrator right now, but as I put it there I realized into what poor shape my dehydrator has fallen. The problem is not the part with the fan and heating element – the problem is with the plastic trays that allow air to circulate around the food. They’re made of plastic, tricky to clean, and I’ve had my dehyrdator so long, and used it so often, that they’re starting to fall apart. I had to throw one away today, and several others have holes in them (I just laid strips of jerky over the holes).

You can get replacement / expansion trays; the dehydrator originally came with four trays, if I recall correctly, and I bought a two-pack of expansion trays twice. At its peak, it had eight trays. Now it’s down to five, almost all of them in poor shape.

It would cost $38 to buy six new trays on Amazon. That’s somewhere between the cost of the cheapest Nesco dehydrator on Amazon and the next-to-cheapest, which is the one I own. So I probably need to just bite the bullet and get a new dehydrator. It may be a couple of months before I can get to it.

Unfortunately, the cheapest dehydrator – $30 – does not have a temperature control. That means it’s permanently set to the maximum temperature, which means it’s OK for beef jerky, but too hot (no matter what the instructions say) to do banana chips, apple chips or things like that. And sometimes, especially if I’m letting a batch of jerky in the dehydrator run overnight, I want to turn it down to a little lower than the recommended jerky setting.

Maybe I’ll check Goodwill; I’m sure there are people who’ve bought dehydrators and used them once or twice before getting tired of them.