Bomber Beef Jerky Recipe

Sirloin Tip Roast
Trimmed then sliced WITH the grain (long-ways, opposite of how a butcher would normally slice meat). Our local butchers will slice this for us; they use the thickness setting of 12. Best of all: Find a butcher who can slice up grass-fed beef instead of grain-fed.

Hickory chips
Mesquite chips
We use both, makes a terrific flavored smoke

Garlic salt
Garlic pepper
Salt & pepper
Tablespoon soy sauce

We use a L'il Chief Smoker, costs about $50 and has a little hot coil inside an aluminum box with 3 racks and a small pan for the wood chips. Soak the wood chips in water while you're preparing the meat (finishing the trimming the butcher didn't catch, seasoning the batch with the salts and peppers). Arrange the seasoned meat slices on the racks, put the wood chips on the heated coil, close 'er up.

Replace the wood chips 4 times — they smolder and add smoke flavor to the drying meat; each pan of wood chips takes about 45 minutes to disappear into embers. Rotate the racks with each wood chip replacement, and turn the meat over when partially dry. Once the 4th wood chip tray is disintegrated, removed the pan.

The meat will continue to dry with the unit plugged in for a total of about 7-10 hours, depending upon the meat thickness and how closely packed the meat was on the racks. When finished, you may have to wipe a bit of excess fat from the pieces. Do this immediately upon removal, while the meat is still warm.

We have a fresh batch of jerky pretty much every week during the summer. Tried a wide variety of meats. Some meats require more flavoring — we originally used rump roast with a 30-minute marinade — but the sirloin tip roast is pretty much perfect just as written. I "fought" with the butchers on this a bit, but a piece of jerky silenced them and we don't fight any longer.

Laree

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