Meat Jerky from my friend Sarah Cearley

1 1/2 to 2 pounds of lean meat — I’ve used round steak or lon­don broil

I run mine through a meat grinder, but you can par­tially freeze the meat which will make it easy to slice it thin with a knife.

Mix together:
1/4 c soy sauce
1 T worch­ester­shire sauce
1/4 t black pep­per
1/4 t gar­lic pow­der
1/2 t onion pow­der
a drib­ble of liq­uid smoke — I like hickory

Add the meat to the mari­nade and stir to coat thor­oughly. Ground or sliced, the meat will rapidly soak up most, if not all, the liq­uid. Allow to mar­i­nate in the fridge a good 8 to 12 hours. I’ve even let mine go 24 hours with­out any ill effect.

My dehy­dra­tor is round, so I smoosh the meat out to the shape of the tray to about 1/8″ thick. If it’s too thin it pulls apart as it dries. Of course, if you do slices you just arrange them on the tray close together but not over­lap­ping. Then I let the dehy­dra­tor work. Mine is lit­tle so it goes almost 5 to 6 hours per batch. I let it run till the meat feels cooked, but not brit­tle. Store in air­tight plas­tic bags, but DO NOT expose to direct sunlight.