Teriyaki Beef Jerky Recipe From Eye Round

Good recipes for beef jerky, teriyaki or otherwise, start with a lean cut sliced thin and evenly. This one uses eye round, a sweet and salty teriyaki marinade of soy sauce, mirin, brown sugar, ginger and garlic, and a night in the fridge. The strips are heated in the oven to 160 degrees F, as USDA FSIS advises, then dried in a food dehydrator until they bend and crack without snapping.

Eye round suits jerky better than almost any other cut. It is very lean, and fat is the enemy of jerky: it does not dry, and it turns stale long before the meat does. It is also one long, even muscle with the grain running straight down its length, so it slices into neat, uniform strips that dry at the same rate.

At a glance: makes about 1 pound of jerky. Prep 30 minutes, firm in the freezer 1 to 2 hours, marinate 12 to 24 hours, heat 10 to 15 minutes, dry 3 to 6 hours.

Gray Shipley, who runs the farm, asks plain questions of food:

“what's on the label and what's actually in it? Is there anything that I can't pronounce?”

Gray Shipley

Homemade jerky makes those easy to answer, because you write the ingredient list yourself. Everything in this batch is in the list below, and you can read the labels on the soy sauce and mirin you buy in the same way. If you buy jerky instead, its label is the place to look.

Ingredients

• 1 eye round roast, about 3 pounds
• 3/4 cup soy sauce, or low-sodium soy sauce for a milder jerky
• 1/4 cup mirin
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon finely grated fresh ginger
• 4 cloves garlic, finely grated
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)
• 1 tablespoon sesame seeds (optional)

Instructions

1. Trim every bit of visible fat and silverskin from the eye round. Wrap it and freeze it for 1 to 2 hours, until it is firm all the way through but not frozen hard.
2. Slice the beef 1/4 inch thick. Slice with the grain, down the length of the roast, for a classic chewy jerky, or across the grain for a more tender one that breaks more easily.
3. Whisk the soy sauce, mirin, brown sugar, ginger, garlic, pepper, onion powder and red pepper flakes until the sugar dissolves.
4. Put the strips in a zip-top bag, pour in the marinade and work it in so every strip is coated. Press out the air, seal, and refrigerate for 12 to 24 hours, turning the bag once or twice.
5. Heat the oven to 300 degrees and set wire racks inside two foil-lined rimmed sheet pans. Drain the strips, throw away the marinade, and pat them dry with paper towels. Lay them on the racks in a single layer, not touching, and sprinkle with sesame seeds if you like.
6. Heat the strips in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes, until an instant-read thermometer slid sideways into the thickest strip reads 160 degrees F. This is the USDA FSIS step that makes homemade jerky safe; marinating alone does not.
7. Move the strips to the dehydrator trays in a single layer. Set the dehydrator to 135 degrees F, inside the FSIS range of 130 to 140 degrees F, and dry for 3 to 6 hours, checking from 3 hours on.
8. The jerky is done when a cooled strip bends and cracks but does not snap, and shows no moist spots when you tear it. Thinner strips finish first, so take them off as they are ready.
9. Cool the jerky completely on a rack and blot off any beads of fat with a paper towel. Pack it in airtight jars or zip-top bags.

Add 1 eye round roast to cart

How to make teriyaki jerky

There are four stages, and the order matters: slice, marinate, heat, dry. The heating step is the one most older recipes leave out. A dehydrator is built to dry food at a low temperature, not to cook it, so USDA FSIS advises heating the strips to 160 degrees F first and then drying them at 130 to 140 degrees F. Pat the strips dry before they go into the oven, so they start drying instead of steaming.

Firming the roast in the freezer is what makes even slicing possible at home. A soft roast squashes under the knife; a firm one cuts cleanly into strips of the same thickness, and strips of the same thickness finish drying together.

The teriyaki beef jerky marinade

This recipe for beef jerky marinade is built like a teriyaki glaze, with less sugar. Soy sauce brings the salt that seasons the meat all the way through. Mirin and brown sugar add sweetness and a little gloss. Fresh ginger and garlic give it a bright edge, and black pepper keeps it from tasting like candy.

For more heat, double the red pepper flakes. For less salt, use low-sodium soy sauce. Leave out oil, including sesame oil, since fat does not dry and shortens how long the jerky keeps. Do not reuse the marinade or brush it on during drying, because it has held raw meat.

Making beef jerky in a food dehydrator

Set the dial to 135 degrees F and lay the heated strips in a single layer with a little space between them, so air can move around each one. Most dehydrators dry unevenly, with the trays closest to the fan or heater drying faster, so swap the trays around every hour or two. Drying time depends on how thick you sliced, how wet the strips were and how humid the kitchen is, which is why the range is 3 to 6 hours.

If your oven has a dehydrate setting that holds 130 to 140 degrees F, you can do the drying on the same racks in the oven after the heating step.

How to store homemade jerky

Let the jerky cool completely before you pack it; warm jerky sweats in the jar. Store it airtight in the refrigerator and eat it within a few weeks, or freeze it for longer. Check the jar after the first day. If you see beads of moisture inside, the jerky needed more drying, so put it back in the dehydrator for an hour. If you ever see mold, throw the batch away.

Food safety

USDA FSIS advises heating jerky strips to 160 degrees F before drying them, then drying at 130 to 140 degrees F. Marinating does not make raw meat safe. Keep the raw strips and marinade in the fridge, and wash anything they touched. See the FSIS page on jerky and food safety, and the FSIS Safe Minimum Internal Temperature Chart for other cooking temperatures.