I made some beef jerky last weekend. You can do it to. It's easy!

First thing you need to do when making jerky is to acquire some meat. This is a flank steak that I got at Costco for $8.19 a pound. Usually when I do jerky I get a cheaper cut (eye of round) but for this one I wanted to try something new and I've been watching Good Eats.

Next cut the meat into strips and trim the fat. To make it a lot easier to cut go ahead and throw it in the freezer until it's firm or even completely frozen. I could be wrong but I believe the only bad thing about freezing meat is it causes the meat to be dry when cooking it, but since this is jerky it doesn't matter.

Since the flank steak was nice and flat I cut it into these nice long thin(1/4 of an inch at max) pieces. Keep the width the same so the drying time is even.

Next comes the marinade(or is it brine?). For this I just used Alton Browns recipe. One batch I added in tobacco sauce to give it an extra kick.

Mix it all up

Combine marinade and meat into a gallon freezer bag. Squeeze out all the air and throw it in the refrigerator for 3-6 hours.

Set out all the strips into the dehydrator. I had no idea how much mine would actual hold so I squeezed as much into one tray that I could.

Spread out onto four trays. Make sure to wipe off the excess marinade from the meat

The manufacturer recommends setting it to 140 degrees and essentially cooking the meat slowly. I've done that before and didn't really like it so this time I set it as low as it could go. If you don't have a dehydrator check out Alton Brown's box fan method.

Bonus. I got tired of cutting and these pieces were really thick so I just cooked them up real quick. They were delicious.

About 10 hours later.

Take a paper towel and wipe off the meat. There will be some fat pooled on the outside. Fat is bad on jerky. It goes rancid.

And there you have it. Delicious jerky to keep all to yourself or give some to a girl that you like(hi Danielle).

FP edit: send your best (or worst) pick up lines. I'll send them to Danielle.