If you’ve ever thought about making your own homemade jerky, this Teriyaki venison jerky recipe is the best, simplest recipe to start with. Don’t let the name fool you – you can make it with beef too!
But the thing is, I grew up in a deer hunting family. Every hunting season, my dad would go out and get a few deer, and then, because we were a big family and a couple year doesn’t go very far, and because dad wasn’t a huge fan of hunting, he asked all the “trophy hunters” in the area to drop off their unwanted game at our house too.
And since we lived right next to a really HUGE deer lease, we ended up with a lot of venison.
And every year, our parents let us kids indulge ourselves – as long as there was plenty of deef roasts for my dad’s beloved 3-ingredient Italian beef – by slicing some of it really thin, marinating it with various sauces (or straight up hot sauce in my younger brother’s case), and hanging it on toothpicks from the oven racks in our wood cookstove’s oven, with the door open, and the fire down low so it wouldn’t get too hot.
So jerky has a soft spot in my heart, but we don’t have a wood stove anymore.
Instead, we typically use a food dehydrator, which you can read about in this old fashioned deer jerky recipe, or as with this particular batch, since we were using our electric oven to help heat the house during this ridiculous, unseasonable cold snap, it just made sense to use the oven.
We also used to use mostly sliced roasts since it was harder to grind meat, but this teriyaki deer jerky recipe is a ground venison jerky recipe, because it’s so much easier to mix seasonings into ground meat than to slice and marinate a roast.
As I said above, this teriyaki venison jerky recipe is super, duper simple, using bottled teriyaki sauce, Worstecershire sauce, and onion powder.
So, though you can marinate sliced venison or beef if you want, I mixed it in with ground venison, which was quick, and made for super tender jerky.
If you have a jerky press, that’s probably a no-brainer for you, but for those of us who don’t, at first glance, it seems a little more complicated. Let me assure you though, that it’s really pretty easy.
Simply press your jerky mixture out between two sheets of parchment or freezer paper, and cut with a pizza cutter, then transfer over to a cooling grid on the flat of a large knife or other thin edge – you could use the knife to cut it into strips as well, but I found the pizza cutter is a lot easier.
You’ll want to set your cooling grid on a cookie sheet to catch any drips before you transfer it to the oven, and voila! You’re all set.
My oven temperature only goes down to 185, but since we had the door open, that was low enough to keep it from cooking while it dried all day long, and we ended up with some pretty fabulous jerky!
2 Tablespoons of maple syrup, honey, or brown sugar (totally optional – we love it without the added sweetness!)
Instructions
Mix ingredients together thoroughly. If you’re multiplying this recipe, a general rule of thumb is one minute of mixing per pound of meat.
roll or pat out on parchment paper to between 1/8 and 1/4 of an inch.
Cut into one inch wide strips.
Transfer over to your dehydrator, or wire rack and dehydrate for 8-12 hours (depending on your temperature and air flow).
Store in an airtight container for up to two weeks in the refrigerator.
Enjoy!
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Freezing the venison prior to marinating makes it easier to slice and helps kill any parasites that might be present. Always marinate meat strips in the refrigerator, not on the counter. Dehydrate until a test piece cracks but does not break when it is bent.
Freezing the venison prior to marinating makes it easier to slice and helps kill any parasites that might be present. Always marinate meat strips in the refrigerator, not on the counter. Dehydrate until a test piece cracks but does not break when it is bent.
We like to use the top round and eye of round, but the sirloin, rump roast, and neck will work well for jerky meat. Venison in general is particularly lean, and these are the leanest cuts. You always want to go with the leanest meat because the fat may give an off-flavor and it makes storing jerky more difficult.
Choosing the Meat: You will need roughly four pounds of meat to make one pound of jerky. You want to choose lean cuts of venison, beef, or other game, because you will have to remove all visible fat.
Preheat the oven to 160 degrees F (70 degrees C). Place a pan or aluminum foil on the oven floor to catch drippings. Remove venison from the marinade and shake off excess. Arrange venison on a wire rack in a single layer and dehydrate in the preheated oven until desired texture is achieved, 6 to 8 hours.
Mix the brine ingredients well and coat the venison with the brine. Once everything is nicely coated, put it all in a freezer bag in the refrigerator for at least 12 hours, and up to 48 hours. The longer you leave the meat in the brine, the saltier it will be and the longer it will keep.
Dehydrators are much more effective at this than most conventional ovens or other heat sources, so it is much easier to make a consistent product with a dehydrator. This allows fast, even drying with little risk of food spoilage. Look for a unit with a high wattage fan and a timer for best results.
The short answer is that your jerky is so tough because it's too dehydrated. For some people, this is a great thing and the tougher the jerky, the better! But maybe toughness isn't what you (or your teeth) want in a jerky.
Too much cure will make the jerky salty. How long did you let it cure for? Recommended curing time is 24 hours for stripped meat and 12 hours for ground meat.
Generally, 3 lbs of raw jerky meat will produce 1 lb of dry jerky. Each PS Jerky Kit is measured for 5 lbs of meat, so expect around 2 lbs of dry jerky. As you might expect, beef jerky is the most popular meat for jerky making but other meats can be just as, if not more, delicious.
The jerky should bend but not break. The “bend test” is the most important criteria to determine if jerky is done. Working with the same test piece (ideally, close to room temperature), bend it in half to test the flexibility. The jerky should bend and eventually break, but not snap off.
This takes up to 15 hours, so yes to leaving beef jerky in the dehydration chambers overnight. But you wouldn't want your fruit left in there overnight… unless you sleep under 6 hours.
Just a few hours in the freezer will work, he says. You'll know your meat is ready to slice when it begins to form ice crystals. You may want to trim the fat on the beef before you freeze it, because it's easier to do when the meat isn't frozen, and fat is what makes jerky spoil faster, says Thomas.
Venison should be stored frozen until preparation for cooking. Properly wrapped or packaged venison can be stored in a freezer for 9-12 months. To avoid quality deterioration, never refreeze thawed venison. Always thaw venison properly in a refrigerator or in a microwave.
Here's a little secret for you that we use here at Two Chicks Jerky; chill your meat before making slices. After you cut the fat deposits off your beef, put it in the freezer for an hour or two.
Jerky made using frozen and frozen-thawed beef showed lower drying yield and higher shear force than jerky prepared using fresh beef (P < 0.05). Freezing raw beef decreased the fat content and increased the redness, yellowness, chroma, and hue values of jerky (P < 0.05).
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