A jerky making kit is the answer to a question every meat lover has asked halfway through a disappointingly small packet: surely I could make this myself? You can, and easily. Beef jerky is one of the oldest snacks in the world, thin slices of lean beef, seasoned and dried slowly until firm, and it turns out your kitchen oven handles the drying part beautifully. This guide covers what a jerky kit actually contains, how a batch works from slicing to snacking, how jerky differs from its South African cousin biltong, which beef to buy, and why homemade jerky is worth the few hours it takes.
What is a jerky making kit?
Jerky is the great American dried meat snack: lean beef sliced thin, seasoned, then dried low and slow until it is firm, dry to the touch and bends without snapping. Done well it is intensely savoury, pleasingly chewy and dangerously easy to finish. A jerky making kit supplies the parts you cannot easily pull together, the seasoning blends and a drying method that works in a domestic kitchen, and leaves you to bring the one ingredient that matters: good lean beef.
Our Beef Jerky Making Kit uses a simplified oven method that takes you from raw beef to finished jerky in a few hours, far quicker than traditional air-drying and pretty much foolproof. There is no smoker, no specialist equipment and no curing chemicals involved. Just your oven, your beef and an afternoon of increasingly promising smells.
What comes inside a beef jerky making kit?
Ours keeps things honest and simple. Inside the box you will find:
- Two seasoning blends. A classic BBQ and a chilli & garlic, so your two batches can be two entirely different snacks, or the same one twice if the first blend wins your heart.
- A recipe booklet. Step-by-step instructions with all the drying timings for the oven method, so you are never left guessing.
- Enough seasoning for two batches. Each batch uses about 500g of lean beef, and the kit makes two 500g batches, so one kit turns a whole kilo of beef into jerky.
What you will not find is a cure. The jerky recipe uses no preservatives at all, just the seasoning blends and your own fresh beef. The seasoning, the salt and a thorough drying do the preserving.
How do you make beef jerky at home?
A batch has three stages, and the first one quietly decides how good the finished jerky will be.
First, slice. Take your lean beef and slice it thin. The trick: pop the beef in the freezer for 30 minutes first, and it firms up just enough to cut thin, even slices without drama. Direction matters too. Slice across the grain for tender jerky, or with the grain if you like a proper old-fashioned chew.
Second, season. Coat your slices in the blend you have chosen, BBQ or chilli & garlic. This is the entire flavour stage: no marinade, no overnight wait.
Third, dry. The seasoned slices hang in your oven on a low heat and dry slowly until firm. The full timings are in the booklet, but think in terms of a few hours rather than the days that traditional air-drying demands. You are looking for jerky that is firm, dry to the touch and bends without snapping. One honest tip for your first batch: every oven differs, so check it early rather than trusting the clock.
What's the difference between jerky and biltong?
Both are dried meat snacks, and the similarity more or less ends there. Jerky is American-style: the beef is sliced thin, seasoned and oven-dried, which puts the seasoning right at the front of every bite and gives a firmer, snackable texture. Biltong is South African: the beef is marinated in cider vinegar and spices, coriander, black pepper and Himalayan salt, before it is dried, which gives it a distinctive tang and a texture you can take anywhere from soft and moist to properly firm.
The cut differs a little too. Biltong rewards a more tender cut, an inexpensive steak or a roasting joint, while jerky simply asks that the beef is as lean as possible.
Which side are you on? If bold, upfront seasoning and a satisfying chew sound like your snack, jerky is calling and you are reading the right article. If it is the vinegar tang you are after, we make a separate Biltong Making Kit that does the South African tradition justice.
Why does homemade jerky beat the shop-bought kind?
Three reasons, and none of them is smugness, though that does arrive free with every batch.
- You know exactly what is in it. Jerky made with our kit is beef and seasoning, nothing else. No cure, no preservatives, no mystery.
- You control the texture. A packet gives you one texture, decided by someone else. A kit gives you the dial: slice across the grain and dry just to firm for a tender bite, or go with the grain and dry longer for jerky with real chew.
- You choose the beef. Thin-cut frying steak or brisket both work really well, and there is real satisfaction in picking your own cut rather than accepting whatever went into the packet.
And then there is quantity. Each kit makes two 500g batches, which is more jerky than most households have ever seen in one place.
Which cut of beef makes the best jerky?
The rule is short and unbendable: as lean as possible, because fat does not dry well. Thin-cut frying steak and brisket both work really well, and you need about 500g for each batch. Beyond leanness, nothing fancy is required. The seasoning and the slow drying do the heavy lifting, so save the special-occasion steak for the frying pan.
Which jerky flavour should you try first?
The kit gives you two directions: BBQ and chilli & garlic. BBQ is the crowd-pleaser, the flavour most people picture when they hear the word jerky. Chilli & garlic is for the household that finds most snacks a little too polite. Since the kit makes two batches, the honest answer is to make both and hold a taste-off. And if you want to be properly scientific about it, slice one batch across the grain and one with it, and settle the texture question at the same time.
How do you store homemade jerky and how long does it keep?
Keep it in an airtight container. Well-dried jerky keeps for a couple of weeks, and storing that container in the fridge extends it further. Two notes worth knowing: if a batch still feels slightly moist, it will not keep as long, so eat that one sooner (rarely a hardship), and the more thoroughly a batch is dried, the better it keeps. In practice, storage tends to be a theoretical problem. Most batches do not survive the week.
What if you cannot choose between jerky, biltong and bacon?
We had a feeling this would come up, so we made the Ultimate Meat Making Kit, which covers bacon, jerky, biltong and more in a single box. No smoker is needed for any of it. The bacon side uses a cold cure: the meat cures and then air-dries in the fridge over several days, with the whole process taking about a week, and the reward is proper dry-cured bacon that crisps in the pan instead of leaking water.
If it is bacon alone that tempts you, the dedicated Bacon Making Kit dry-cures pork belly in your choice of three directions: chilli & garlic, juniper & fennel, or pancetta. And if you have read this far nodding at every mention of dried beef, we suspect the Beef Jerky Making Kit was always the one for you.
Jerky making kit FAQs
What meat do I need to make beef jerky?
Lean beef, as lean as you can find, because fat does not dry well. Thin-cut frying steak or brisket both work really well, and you need about 500g per batch.
Can I use a dehydrator instead of an oven?
Yes, and it is arguably the ideal tool. Follow the recipe as written, but instead of hanging the meat in the oven, lay or hang the strips in the dehydrator at 65°C for 10 to 12 hours, until dried right through.
What if my oven will not go low enough?
No problem. Set it to its very lowest setting, making sure it is actually on and heating, then hang a tea towel between the door and the oven so the door stays ajar. That drops the temperature a little and lets the moisture escape. At the slightly higher heat it may be done closer to the 2 hour mark, so keep an eye on it. AGA owners can use the simmering oven with the same tea towel trick.
Does the jerky making kit contain preservatives?
No. The jerky recipe uses no cure at all, just the seasoning blends and your own beef. Only our bacon recipes use a traditional cure, because that is the safest and most reliable way to cure bacon at home.
Is home-dried jerky safe to eat?
Yes, when you use fresh lean beef, follow the recipe and dry the jerky thoroughly. The seasoning and salt help preserve it, and if you are ever in doubt, simply dry it a little longer.
Why did my jerky turn out tough?
The usual culprits are slices cut a little too thick, slices cut with the grain rather than across it, or a drying time that ran slightly long. Slice thinner, cut across the grain and pull the next batch out a touch earlier. Every oven differs, so check your first batch early.
Ready to make your own jerky? Browse our meat making kits, hand-packed in Britain with free UK delivery over £25.
