Making dried meat at home comes down to four steps: choosing a lean cut, slicing it thin, seasoning or curing it, and drying it slowly at low heat until the moisture is gone. The whole process takes anywhere from 4 to 12 hours depending on your method, and the result is shelf-stable meat that lasts weeks or even months with proper storage.
Choosing the Right Cut
Fat is the enemy of dried meat. It doesn’t dehydrate the way muscle does, and it goes rancid quickly, shortening the shelf life of your finished product. You want the leanest cut you can find.
For beef, the best options are all from the round (the rear leg of the cow). Eye of round is the top choice: it’s a single oval-shaped muscle with very little interior fat and a tender texture that dries beautifully. Top round is a close second, slightly less tender but flavorful and inexpensive. Bottom round works well too. You may also see “London broil” at the butcher counter, which is typically top round sold under a different name.
If you’re working with other animals, the same principle applies. Choose lean cuts from the legs or loin. Venison, turkey breast, and bison all make excellent dried meat. Trim every visible bit of fat before you start slicing.
How to Slice for the Right Texture
Before slicing, pop the meat in the freezer for one to two hours. You want it firm but not frozen solid. This makes it much easier to cut thin, even strips.
Slice the meat into strips roughly 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick. The direction you cut relative to the muscle fibers (the “grain”) determines the final texture. Slicing with the grain produces chewy, tough jerky that pulls apart in long strings. Slicing against the grain, perpendicular to those fibers, gives you softer, more tender pieces that tear apart easily. Most people prefer cutting against the grain, but if you like a serious chew, go with the grain. Either way, aim for consistent thickness so everything dries at the same rate.
Many butcher counters will slice the meat for you if you ask. Just tell them the thickness you want and whether you’d like it cut with or against the grain.
Seasoning and Marinating
At minimum, you need salt. Salt draws moisture out of the meat and kickstarts the preservation process. Beyond that, the flavor is up to you. A basic jerky marinade combines soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, black pepper, garlic powder, and a touch of brown sugar or honey. Toss the sliced meat in the marinade, making sure every piece is coated, and refrigerate for at least 4 hours. Overnight is better.
For a South African biltong style, the approach is different. Instead of a wet marinade, you coat the meat in red wine vinegar for about 30 minutes (longer than that and the vinegar flavor gets too strong), then rub it generously with coarse salt, black pepper, and crushed coriander seeds. The coriander is what gives biltong its signature flavor.
A Note on Curing Salt
Curing salt (often called Prague Powder #1) contains 6.25% sodium nitrite mixed into regular salt. It inhibits the growth of dangerous bacteria, particularly the kind that causes botulism, and gives cured meat its characteristic pink color. The standard ratio is 0.25% of the total weight of your meat. For one pound of meat, that works out to roughly one level teaspoon. Curing salt is not strictly required for jerky that will be properly dried and eaten quickly, but it adds a significant margin of safety, especially if you’re air-drying at room temperature rather than using a dehydrator.
The Drying Process
You have three main options for drying: a food dehydrator, a conventional oven, or open air. Each has trade-offs.
Food Dehydrator
This is the easiest and most reliable method. Dehydrators let you set a precise temperature and have built-in fans that circulate air evenly across multiple trays. You rarely need to rotate anything. Set the temperature to 160°F (71°C) and lay the strips in a single layer without overlapping. Most batches take 4 to 8 hours depending on thickness and how dry you like your jerky.
Oven Drying
If you don’t have a dehydrator, your oven works. Set it to its lowest temperature, ideally around 170°F to 200°F. Place the strips directly on the oven racks with a baking sheet underneath to catch drips. Crack the oven door open an inch or two to let moisture escape and improve airflow. You’ll need to rotate the trays every couple of hours since ovens don’t circulate air as evenly as dehydrators. Expect the process to take 3 to 6 hours. The main challenge is that most ovens aren’t designed for temperatures this low, so the heat can be erratic.
Air Drying (Biltong Style)
Traditional biltong skips heat entirely. After seasoning, you hang the meat strips on hooks (or bent paper clips) inside a ventilated box or well-aired room. A small fan helps keep air moving. The meat dries at room temperature over 4 to 5 days. The longer you leave it, the drier and firmer it gets. This method works best in dry climates or controlled indoor environments. If you air-dry, using curing salt is strongly recommended since the meat spends extended time in the temperature range where bacteria thrive.
Hitting a Safe Temperature
Reaching the right internal temperature is what makes dried meat safe to eat. The USDA guidelines call for beef to hit at least 160°F (71°C) and poultry to reach 165°F (74°C) to kill pathogens like Salmonella and E. coli.
The safest approach is to pre-heat your meat strips before drying. You can do this by briefly simmering the strips in your marinade until they reach 160°F internally, then transferring them to the dehydrator or oven to finish drying. This kills harmful bacteria up front, before the drying process lowers the moisture content.
If you skip the pre-heat step, you can add a post-drying heat treatment instead: place the finished jerky in a 275°F oven for 10 minutes. This provides an additional layer of pathogen reduction. Either method works. The key point is that drying alone, without reaching these temperatures at some stage, may not eliminate all harmful bacteria.
How to Tell When It’s Done
The simplest test is the bend test. Let a piece cool to room temperature, then bend it in half. Properly dried meat will bend without snapping, and you’ll see tiny white fibers begin to separate at the bend point. If the piece snaps cleanly in two, it’s overdone. If it bends limply and feels moist, it needs more time. You want something in between: pliable, dry on the surface, and showing those telltale white fibers when stressed.
The strips will feel softer while still warm from the dehydrator or oven, so always test a cooled piece. They firm up significantly as they cool.
Storage and Shelf Life
How you store your dried meat makes a dramatic difference in how long it lasts. In a standard zip-lock bag at room temperature, homemade jerky stays good for about one week. That’s it. The bag lets in enough air and moisture to start degrading quality fast.
Vacuum sealing extends the shelf life to about four to five weeks at room temperature. If you vacuum-seal and then freeze the jerky, it lasts nearly indefinitely. Jerky stored this way for two years has been reported to still taste good.
Unless you plan to eat your entire batch within a week, a vacuum sealer is worth the investment. For long-term storage, vacuum-seal portions into small bags and freeze them. Pull out a bag when you want some, and let it come to room temperature before opening to avoid condensation forming on the meat.
Yield and Planning
Meat loses a significant amount of its weight during drying, mostly from water evaporating. Expect to lose roughly 50 to 60 percent of the starting weight. That means one pound of raw beef yields about 6 to 8 ounces of finished jerky. Plan your batch size accordingly, because a pound of jerky disappears faster than you’d think.