Quick and Easy Dinner Ideas
Quick & Easy Meat Menu - Recipes for quick meat main dishes.
Speedy & Satisfying Salads - Easy to assemble dinner & side salad recipes.
Very Easy Vegetables - Quick & delicious side dish veggie recipes.
Pretty Quick Poultry - Fast & easy Chicken & turkey recipes.
Family Friendly Casseroles - The title says it all - kids will eat these!
So Swift Soups - Family feeding soup recipes; including slowcooker!
Busy Family Kitchen Tips - Timesavers, Meal Prep & Storage Tips that Work.
How to Make Homemade Jerky
For some of us, jerky was something that we had on car trips as snacks, while other people remember jerky as an an important part of the food that they got during childhood. In any case, the convenience of eating dried meat whether you're on the road or just in a hurry makes it a fairly desirable food in a lot of ways. It's not messy, easy to hold, and there are lots of different varieties of it. You'll find that there are plenty of different ways to make jerky on your own, and before you know it, you'll have your own recipe to take a look at.
To start off with, you'll have to select what kind of meat you want to use. Though pork jerky and even squid jerky has its followers, the most basic meat to start off with is beef. Picking up a pound of beef of almost any quality will be a good way to get started. All you need to do is slice the meat into strips, across the grain. The thickness is really up to you; the thinner the slice is, the more quickly it will dry, and the thicker it is, the more chewy it will be.
After this, you will need to marinade the meat for about eight to twelve hours. A basic mix will consist of Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, coarse pepper, garlic and onion powder and salt, but you can make up your mix as you go along. Try experimenting a little. Some people find that they love making up mixes that use fruit juice and various types of honey as well. This is a matter of taste, so simply do what you think will taste best.
Once the meat has been marinated, think about how you want to dry it. To dry it in your oven, set the temperature to warm and open the door from time to time to let the moisture escape. Thee meat should be laid out flat on an oven rack or similar grate and should not be touching each other. This process will take anywhere from two to eight hours, depending on the size and the power of your oven. With a food dehydrator, simply follow the included instructions for drying meat. A dehydrator tends to get the food done a little quicker while freeing up your oven.
Remember that beef that is done will crack and take on a stringy appearance, while meat that is not done has a rather moist appearance. With this basic template, you'll find that you can create almost any sort of jerky that you like. Take some time and think about what tastes you like best and how you can incorporate them into your new food experiment.
