Autoimmune Protocol Friendly Beef Jerky – Guest Recipe by David Maren of Tendergrass Farms

David Maren is a husband, father, farmer, and co-founder of Tendergrass Farms. Tendergrass Farms is an online grass fed meat shop that exists as a bridge between the often geographically isolated family farmer and committed grass fed meat enthusiasts like yourself. The Tendergrass Farms vision is to sustain family farms through making it easy for you to purchase their meats by taking advantage of appropriate technology and ultra-efficient transportation models that enable their meats to be shipped to fans all around the USA. If you’re not already a fan of Tendergrass Farms, you’re missing out: Go bookmark their site, like their Facebook page, and follow them on Twitter!

A simple recipe: Sea Salt Beef Jerky

This is the time of year that most of us start to take a few more hikes, go on a few more fishing trips, and think a little more about salty trail foods like beef jerky. Here’s an easy grass fed beef and sea salt jerky recipe to help you celebrate warm weather.

Supplies:

• At least one nice grass fed beef London Broil roast
• Good sea salt (we used Himalayan Pink for this photo shoot)
• An oven (no fancy dehydrator needed)
• Some of those bamboo skewers they sell for making kabobs (optional)

Sourcing your beef: At Tendergrass Farms,  we just recently lowered the price of our 2 LB dry aged Grass Fed Beef London Broil roasts from $25 to $20, and that’s the best cut for you to use anyway. So you’re in luck. Other fattier roasts don’t make very good jerky. (Yes, this is one time when “lean” is a good thing.)

This recipe takes about 15 minutes of prep time and then 6 to 8 hours in the oven.

Step #1… Slice it.

First, slice your roast up into thin strips. Try to keep them as consistent in thickness as possible but don’t stress this step too much. Using a sharp knife will help with that.

Step #2… Salt it.

Now you’ll want to salt it to taste. You’re not curing the meat so no specific amount of salt is necessary. The salt does help keep it from going bad but its main purpose is to enhance both flavor and nutrition. This is a great way to get more of those good minerals found in raw Himalayan Pink or Celtic sea salt into your diet.

Step #3… Skewer it.

Put the meat strips on bamboo kabob skewers and put the skewers in the oven at 200° Fahrenheit. If you don’t have any skewers, be creative. Wooden chop sticks also work. Once you’ve gotten all the meat neatly arranged in the oven, close a big wooden spoon in the door of the oven. This will keep the oven from closing completely and will allow the meat’s moisture to escape. Your meat will lose about 66{4dd43735419885e2296c717ac798d5bb3483a708b4c1340b99a8b965668bd4df} of its weight as water vapor and it needs somewhere to go.

Step #4… Store it.

Or eat it. Depending on your oven and how dry you like your jerky, it should take about 6 to 8 hours for your jerky to dehydrate enough that it looks and feels like jerky. If you get impatient and take it out before it’s totally dry, it will need to be kept in the fridge and eaten rather quickly. If it’s pretty salty and very dry and you keep it in a sealed container, it should be good for up to one year.

Looks pretty easy, huh? And it’s relatively affordable. At $20 for a 2 pound Grass Fed Beef London Broil, it comes to $10/LB with free shipping over $199. Even after the water loss, that’s about what you’d pay for “natural” beef jerky at Wal-Mart.

Still not convinced that you need to be making your own jerky? Tendergrass Farms has just launched already-made Himalayan Pink Salt Grass Fed Beef Jerky!!! YUM!