I like beef jerky. Like most people, I can put away an entire bag, regardless of if its 1 serving or 10. The stuff at the store is pretty expensive though. I therefore tried making my own.

I looked at several recipes, but settled again on one by Alton Brown from Good Eats. You can view the recipe here. An important note: Alton’s recipe calls for use of flank steak. While I like a good grilled flank steak, I simply couldn’t find affordable flank steak anywhere around the Quad Cities (affordable for me was less than $10/lb). Following the advice of other websites, I had Fareway slice up some round steak for this endeavor.

I also didn’t use Alton’s method of drying with box fans and furnace filters. I had a food dehydrator handy and used that.

Ultimately, this came out really well. The jerky was spicy, smoky, sweet, salty, and perhaps most importantly, jerky! The only downside to this recipe ended up being me. I had a hard time controlling myself and went through this in under two days. I’d recommend the recipe and process to anyone who is curious about making their own jerky.