Auto Jerky

My amazing and creative husband wanted some healthy, pastured beef jerky. Knowing the fundamentals of dehydration (temperature around 150°) and not wanting to heat the house up by using our oven, he started to wonder about dehydrating the beef in the car.

A quick check on the internet revealed that this in fact was possible and others are doing it, so we gave it a try. Ryan looked up a jerky recipe, mixed it together, and I sliced the round streak into strips. We threw the beef in the jerky mix and then placed the strips on a wire rack sitting on a cookie sheet, and off to the car we went.

The car was parked in full sun and the temperature reached 150°. About four hours later we had jerky and it was tasty!

Ready for the car

  
Just getting started

Now it's cooking

What did we do with the left over jerky mix? We added some olive oil and marinated the steak we were going to have for dinner.

Now that we have proven Auto Jerky works, we are going to prep some jerky and maybe some fruit and nuts and send those with Ryan to work. By mid-afternoon or sooner he should have a pretty good snack. Talk about a food geek – I am sure he will take some heat for it.

From a cost perspective this is pretty affordable compared to purchasing prepared “healthy” jerky from a company. A quick search on the Internet shows that a half pound can run $16 or more. Our beef is $4.30 a pound, and seasoning cost is maybe $1. I haven’t weighed our raw beef and the final product, but I am thinking we come in at about $5.50 a half pound. In addition, we don’t need to purchase a dehydrator, we get our beef at a great price because we purchase ¼ of a grass fed cow, and we don’t have to pay shipping.

If you try making Auto Jerky or another type of dehydrated food, please let us know how it goes.