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Make Your Own DIY Box-Fan Beef Jerky

Step 1
As any meat-lover will readily agree to, one of the most unsettling
things about the 21st century is the fact that a few ounces of beef
jerky€”easily the greatest foodstuff of all time€”can cost as much as six
or seven dollars. If youre like us, that just wont do.

Instead, using a method adapted from the great jerky enthusiast Alton
Brown, well walk you through how to create pounds of stunningly good
beef jerky at a mere fraction of the market price. Youll need only some
beef, a few marinating ingredients, a box fan, and a couple of cellulose
air-filters that you can buy at any hardware store.

Before we start: You should know that beef jerky is not only absurdly
easy to make, but its also one of the few ways to prepare uncooked meat
thats safe to eat. Like smoking or salting, letting thin strips dry out
actually preserves and sterilizes meat. The reason is simple: Most
meat-eating microbes need water, and making jerky involves little more
than removing all the moisture from beef. Properly prepared and stored,
uncooked beef jerky will stay preserved for years.

Depending on what cut of meat you use, your jerky can vary dramatically
in flavor. Youre going to want to pick a very lean cut of beef (resist
the knee-jerk reaction to find a well marbled hunk of meat) that can be
cut in thin strips along the grain. Here, Im using 4.5 lbs of top-round
steak.