Basic Beef Jerky Marinade

Making beef jerky at home is easy and fun!

This Beef Jerky Marinade Recipe is pretty basic and will get you started.

A part of the fun in making jerky, however, is creating your own flavors.

You will need approximately 1/2 cup of marinade for each pound of beef so adjust this recipe according to how much beef you have.

Pick out a nice beef top round roast at your grocery and have the butcher slice it 1/4 inch thick.

When you get it home remove all visible fat and cut the slices about 1 1/2 inches wide and 4 to 6 inches long.

Basic Beef Jerky Marinade Recipe

2/3 cup Worcestershire sauce
2/3 cup of soy sauce
1/4 cup pineapple juice
1 tsp. of black pepper
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. onion powder

The above ingredients are just the basics. Optionally you can add any of the following to your beef jerky marinade:

1 tsp. liquid smoke
1/4 cup Brown Sugar
1-2 tsp ground cayenne pepper
2-3 tsp. Tabasco Sauce
2 Tbsp Chili paste (This is hot stuff!)
2-3 tsp. crushed red peppers

Mix all the beef jerky marinade ingredients together in a large (gallon size or larger) plastic zipper bag.

Add the sliced beef and refrigerate for about 12 hours or overnight, turning and mixing every once in a while.

After the marinating time you will need a drying rack of some sort. You can just place the strips directly on your oven rack but be sure to have something underneath to catch drips.

A sheet of aluminum foil in the bottom of will work fine.

I use a half sheet pan with a cookie cooling rack inside of it.

Drain the beef in a colander and pat dry with paper towels (the drier the better at this point).

Set your oven to 150 degrees and carefully place the beef slices directly onto the oven racks (if that's what you're using.) as close together as possible but not overlapping.

I always place an oven thermometer on the rack near the front so I can observe and adjust the temperature if necessary.

Leave the oven door open a crack to allow moisture to escape.

Drying times will vary according to oven differences and the thickness of your beef. It helps to turn them over once in a while.

I think my last batch took about 6 hours.

The total weight of your jerky will be about 1/3 the weight of the beef top round roast you started with. So if you had a 3 pound roast you should have about 1 pound of jerky.

Perfect jerky is firm and dry and not at all spongy. You should be able to bend it slightly before it cracks.

If it's over dry it will break when you try to bend it. Start test bending before you think it's ready so you can get it just right.

Like I said this Beef Jerky Marinade is just to get you started. Experiment on your own. The fun of homemade beef jerky is creating your own flavors.

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