Smoked Beef Jerky


 

John O Jr

New member
This is my recipe for smoked beef jerky. I borrowed part of the recipe for the marinade from Alton Brown's recipe for jerky.

Ingredients:
2lbs Top Round (or other lean cut of beef like flank steak) cut into 1/4" thick slices
(for marinade
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1 10oz bottle of Worcestershire sauce
1 10oz bottle of Soy sauce
1 cup of sugar
1 tablespoon of onion powder
...and any other spices you may want to add
I add a drop or two of Dave's Ghost pepper sauce and some cayenne pepper for a bit of heat

Mix the marinade ingredients well in large mixing bowl. You may want to heat the marinade to help dissolve the sugar, but make sure to cool the marinade again before adding meat for safe handling.

Add the meat to bowl of marinade or large freezer bag with marinade piece by piece to ensure all the meat is exposed to marinade. Cover/seal the bowl or bag and put in fridge for at least a few hours. I try to go with at least 5 hours or overnight.

Prepare the WSM for a 4 hour smoke at about 200 degrees. Many of the recipes I've come across for jerky calls for a max of 160 degrees, but I find it hard to keep my temps that low. I've made some great jerky smoked at about 225 degrees for 3 1/5 hours using lump charcoal and a few hickory chunks. This will make some very smoke-flavored jerky. You may vary the amount of wood or smoke time to adjust the flavor (i.e. smoke for half the time and finish in oven).

Tip for arranging the meat in smoker:
-I went to walmart and purchased a few screwdriver hangers to hang the meat from. Basically they are small metal racks with a couple rows of loops. I used a pair of pliers to open the loops and then I wired all three racks to the bottom of the top grate. Each rack has 12 loops, so three racks gave me 36 meat hangers and I still had the entire top grate to lay any extra meat I may have.
-A simpler variation of this is to use non-coated paperclips to hang your jerky.
-Make sure to cut any pieces of meat in half that are too long (which may touch the top of foil-covered water pan).

Do not put water in the water pan. Just cover it with foil and leave the lower 2nd grate out.

Will try to post a picture for when I make this again, which may possibly be as early as this weekend.
 
I made some jerky today on my WSM following the above recipe, it came out great.

I used a rump roast, cut it about 1/4" by 1" - marinaded it over night. Hung it between the grates using small wooden skewers.

I kept the temp between 140 - 180 for almost 6 hours.

I could have done better with the charcoal management, I kept having to add coals. I was worried that the temp would get to high and I wouldn't be able to lower it. I haven't made jerky in a long time on my WSM, but overall I'm happy with the outcome.

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