Thin slices of fresh meat are immersed in a flavorful marinade for several hours and then dehydrated or baked to create perfectly textured homemade beef jerky.
Slice the meat against the grain into strips ¼ inch thick.
Combine other ingredients together in a freezer bag and add the meat. Cover the meat all over with the mixture and place in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours, the longer the better. (We gave ours just 2 hours and it came out very flavorful.)
Place the meat into the dehydrator. Ours took 7 hours to dehydrate at 150 degrees. Times can vary based on temperatures, moisture content of the meat, thickness of the cut, etc.
Oven Method
I haven’t yet tried this method, but I’ve heard that you can bake the jerky in the oven at 160 degrees for about 5 hours. (But check on it every 30 minutes after the first couple of hours.) Ideally, you would also leave the oven door cracked open a tad. You can use skewers to pierce the meat at the top and lay the skewer across the oven racks so that the meat hangs down.