My Simple Jerky Recipe

For Christmas 2011, my wife gave me a food dehydrator.  It was without a doubt one of the best gifts she has ever given me and I have definitely put it to good use over the last year.   I frequently use it to make not only jerky, but dried fruits as well.  Some of our family favorites are dried pineapples, dried apples, and dried strawberries.  From time to time, I will  also use it to herbs such as rosemary.

Of all the things I make in my food dehydrator, jerky is unquestionably my favorite to eat.  For the past few months, I have experimented with various marinades, seasonings, and recipes.  Some recipes I got from buddies, others I found on the net, and I have even bought a couple of commercial jerky marinades.  Of all that I have tried, I found that my favorite is a very simple recipe I found by accident when I ran out of other ingredients in the pantry.  As it turned out, I only had fajita marinade that  I could use to flavor the jerky.  So I put the fajita marinade to the test and I couldn't have been happier with the results.  It is now my "go to" recipe for jerky.

Ingredients
5 lbs of meat
10 ounces of fajita marinade
Pepper
Seasoned Salt

Start with 5 lbs of beef (I prefer eye of round) or turkey (turkey breast cutlets work great).  Cut them in strips no wider than 1/3 inches wide.  Make sure all pieces are cut at the same width so they will dehydrate at the same rate.  Put the cut strips into a container with a lid or a 1 gallon Ziploc bag.  Add 10 ounces of the fajita marinade of your choice.  Let soak for 6-8 hours in marinade, occasionally shaking up container to get marinade on all the meat.  After it has marinated, start evenly spreading the marinated meat on the dehydrator trays.  I have found that each tray will hold about 1 pound of meat.  Next sprinkle a little seasoned salt on the meat and then cover with as much pepper as you prefer.  Once this is done, you can turn on the dehydrator and "cook" for 8-12 hours.  When it is finished, you can put the pieces on a paper towel for a couple of hours to soak up any residual moisture (but there really shouldn't be any moisture left).  Enjoy.

Marinated turkey breast strips with a light coat of  seasoned salt and pepper.  This is what they look like before your start the dehydrator.

Same turkey breast strips after being in the dehydrator for 10 hours.

When finished dehydrating, spread on a paper towel to cool down and soak up any residual moisture.