Making Dad's Beef Jerky

Beef jerky is expensive if you like it and want to eat a lot of it.  Even out here in California, the good beef jerky is about $24 per pound.  Dad has a great recipe for homemade beef jerky.  He has perfected his recipe with years of trials and error. He says that we still wants it a little hotter.  We found this great spice store in Old Town Temecula called The Spice Merchants that sells hundreds of spices.

Inside the Temecula Spice Store

  Last time we were there I asked for their hottest pepper spice.  I bought an ounce of Habanero Pepper Powder. The powder is hot!  But the real hot pepper is the Ghost Pepper also known as "Bhut Jolokai".  It has a Scoville Pepper Heat rating of over 1 million. It is certified by the Guiness Book of World records as the hottest pepper in the world!  You can read about this pepper here on Wikipedia.

Pepper Heat Index. Easier to read if you click on this picture

 They were all out of Ghost Pepper powder, but I bought some Ghost Pepper Sea Salt to add to some of out other recipes.  I will check the store again next time we are in Temecula.


I made some jerky using the new Habanero Powder.  I changed the recipe substituting 1 tsp of Cayenne Pepper and 1/4 tsp of Habanero Power for the original amount of Cayenne Pepper in Dad's recipe.  The meat is vacuum packed using a Food Saver Vacuum Container like these, and using the vacuum machine that sucks the air from the container.

Beef Jerky in Container

Food Saver Vacuum Containers

Rather than placing the meat & sauce in a zip log bag for two days, the vacuum container does the work in three hours.  It actually makes the juice permeate the meat, so that there is very little juice remaining at all. 

Hardly any juice left over!

The, I put all the meat in a American Harvest Snackmaster Dehydrator with 4 sections for about 6-7 hours set at the meat setting 145 degrees.  

Jerky Cooking in Dehydrator

American Harvest Dehydrator set at Meat Setting

 After about 6-7 hours (depending on the thickness of the meat) you have homemade beef jerky, yum!  It is a little hotter than the normal recipe and I also like the way the pepper powder seems to coat the jerky.  Its too hot for Elly though.  I promised here that I will make some mild jerky for here, possibly by eliminating the cayenne pepper powder altogether.

Jerky all done!