Beef Jerky

I so wish you could reach into your monitor and take a bite out of this! It is just the tastiest beef jerky I have eaten in quite some time. As most of you all know we butchered a couple of beef last Thursday and cut and ground everything up over the weekend. On Sunday night I remembered a recipe I had printed out some time ago when we butchered a deer. I planned on smoking some deer meat but I never did get around to it and then the meat got eaten as a roast and well I never did do it. So on Sunday I sliced up a bunch of meat into thin slices and mixed up:

Beef Jerky Marinade

1/2 cup coarse salt
A bit of hot water, maybe a cup or so.
Dissolve the salt in the hot water in a large bowl.
Add:
3/4 cup brown sugar
3 ounces of soy sauce (just under half a cup)
1 tablespoon garlic powder
2-3 shakes of liquid smoke
10 shakes Tabasco Sauce
Mix like the dickens. I ended up using a Bamix hand mixer because the garlic powder just didn't want to mix in.
Then add about 7 cups of water.
The recipe also called for 3 ounces of red cooking wine but I didn't have any so I left it out and added a bit of extra water.
Add your meat, I probably added about 3 pounds of meat, sliced really thin with as much fat as I could trim off. I used my meat slicer and partially froze the meat for easier slicing.
I mixed this all up on Sunday night and put it in the dehydrator today (Tuesday morning). I thought I would have enough to put in the smoker and the dehydrator but the dehydrator took it all! It's eight hours later and mmm mmm mmm :)

You certainly don't have to butcher a cow to do this, you could use flank steak, round roast, or a cut that doesn't have a lot of fat in it. Give it a try, you won't be disappointed. I have another batch on the go and I will put this one in the smoker. I cut the meat a tad thicker and I'll let you all know how it turns out.