Old-School Deer Jerky Recipe
Learn to make an old-school deer jerky recipe from Grandpa using simple ingredients and marinated meat.
Deer jerky is like gold to some people. Therefore, it makes a fair snack to share with others during holidays or family gatherings. You can use any part of your harvested deer, including stew meat, pieces of the neck, and even the usual scraps! You can use the same recipe for beef, too.
Ingredients
- 2 or 3 pounds of deer meat (venison)
- 1/2 cup of soy sauce
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 3/4 tablespoon Louisiana Hot Sauce (not Tabasco sauce!)
- 3 rounded tablespoons brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon liquid smoke
- 1 tablespoon dry wine
Recipe
- Cut the meat into 1/8-inch thick pieces. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Jerky, of course, is supposed to be chewy, but if you try to cut against the grain instead of with the grain, it will be more tender and less of a choking hazard. Trim your meat. The less sinew on the strips, the better. If you’re using deer meat, you can soak it overnight in salty ice water, and it will draw out any gamey taste, which sometimes comes with bigger bucks.
- Mix the meat with all the ingredients and sprinkle a little cayenne pepper on top if you like.
- Soak the meat for 15 minutes to an hour or overnight. Make sure the pieces are soaking wet and thoroughly marinated before dehydrating them.
- Place the marinated pieces on your dehydrator trays overnight. If you’re using an oven, lay the pieces across the grills and set the oven to low heat with the door slightly cracked open. You can simply place something like a chopstick or a wooden skewer between the door with it sticking out.
- You can cook jerky like this in the oven for a few hours, depending on the temperature, until they’re no longer soft.
- Carefully place your fresh slices of jerky in zip-lock bags, and don’t tell anyone except your favorite people about it! Feel free to play with the recipe, and be sure to write it down so you can get it to taste just the way you want it every time. If you plan on making big batches, you can quickly freeze jerky in any air-tight container.
JOSEPH MICHAEL NEEL is a passionate writer and outdoorsman. As it’s been said, “No man enters the same river twice. For it is not the same man and it is not the same river.” Feel free to follow Joseph Michael Neel on Facebook or LinkedIn.
Originally published in the October/September 2024 issue of Countryside and Small Stock Journal and regularly vetted for accuracy.
