Home made Beef jerky with dehydrator

 

My humble Korean dehydrator

 

I gave up using the Philips Air Fryer for making Beef jerky. Too powerful. Not really suitable but you could still use it if you're really desperate. I caved and bought myself a cheap dehydrator. It is supposed to have arrived from Korea but who knows. Thankfully, there were no broken parts and everything had worked fine the last 5 or 6 times. I selected the one with only temperature control because the cheapo version can only control either the time or the temperature. Aiyah, time can control yourself, right? It's not like I'm gonna let this cheapo piece of equipment run overnight (dare not!) so I only use it on weekends when I am around for hours on end.

 

 

Removeable trays

 

The fan is blowing from below at a very low rate. It's not so hot that I can burn myself. In fact, I move the bottomost tray to the top every hour and this is without switching off the gadget. It's so simple to use. Only set the temperature (I set it to maximum) and press the 'ON' button. That's all. I then move the trays so that every tray gets to sit at the bottom where the fan is, for about an hour. If I use 5 trays, that'll be like a total of 5 hours. The kids LOVE the beef jerky!!! Success!!!

 

RAW layers of seasoned beef on the trays

 

I experimented several times before I've reached an acceptable level of taste. Well, I can kick myself for not taking pictures of this batch of jerky after it'd been done. It looked great. The above pic is of the RAW meat, please! Not the end result. I intend to make another batch this SG50 weekend so I'll try to remember to take pics. The reason why I didn't take any pics of the above mentioned batch was the kids were taking them off these trays to eat towards the end of the 5 hours or so! They couldn't wait any more, which is usually the case. We're really suckers for Beef Jerky.

 

I have no easy access to Biltong premix so I came up with my own.

What cut of beef do I use? I hear people saying to use this, to use that. Seriously, I tried various cuts. My only advice is to buy cuts with minimal fat and cut as thinly as possible.

Enjoy!

(Added: Here's a pic of an earlier batch. Bad lighting and bad photo but this is just to give you an idea.)