Ground Beef Jerky Buffalo Style!

Some folks will eat just about anything dipped or slathered in ketchup or Ranch.  In this house, folks will eat just about anything dipped, slathered or mixed with buffalo sauce.  We don't mess around with the little bottles - we go with the big gallon jug from the box store.  And no, that gallon doesn't last us a year, or six months...  (*Frank's Hot Sauce + butter and garlic powder = buffalo sauce)

My son started making beef jerky with roasts I had sliced when purchased.  His primary diet is buffalo; buffalo wings, buffalo pizza, buffalo dip, buffalo chicken sandwiches, buffalo chips... you get the idea.  So it only makes sense that his sauce of choice for jerky would be - you guessed it - buffalo!  It was fantastic!  Everyone absolutely loves it.  But... it gets pretty expensive buying those cuts of beef for the never-ending supply of jerky.  So I was thinking about the still plentiful amount of ground beef we have in the deep freeze from the beef we had butchered last spring.  If you've ever tucked half a cow in your freezer you know that you run out of the better cuts - roasts, ribs, steaks - way before you run out of ground beef.  There are only so many things my family will eat that includes ground beef.  We'd like to get another side of beef this spring but we just don't have the room while we still have this much ground beef in the freezer.  Wanting to use it and not waste it while at the same time wishing for a cheaper cut of meat for jerky - light bulb moment.  I've had jerky made from ground beef before and remember it was very good and so I decided to look for a recipe online.  Recipes are plentiful, of course.  I just wanted a basic recipe that I could add buffalo sauce to and the first one I came across seemed like it would work just fine.  But even then, I had to modify because I didn't have a couple of the listed ingredients.  But I just tossed in what I thought would work - and my own version of ground beef buffalo jerky was born dehydrated.

The original recipe from Food.com

Ingredients

Nutrition

Servings 80 Yields 5 lbs Units US

• 5 lbs 90% lean ground beef (90-92%)
• 4 ¹⁄₂ teaspoons non-iodized salt
• 2 ¹⁄₄ teaspoons Accent seasoning
• ³⁄₄ teaspoon garlic powder
• ¹⁄₂ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 2 ¹⁄₄ tablespoons meat tenderizer
• ³⁄₄ tablespoon pepper
• 3 tablespoons brown sugar
• ¹⁄₂ cup Worcestershire sauce
• ¹⁄₂ cup liquid smoke
• ¹⁄₃ cup ketchup

Directions

1. Mix all spices with ground beef EXCEPT Worcestershire, liquid smoke and ketchup.
2. You need to really get your hands in to mix it well.
3. Press into strips with a jerky gun.
4. Mix Worcestershire, liquid smoke and ketchup in a shallow dish.
5. Coat strips with sauce.
6. Place on trays to dry.
7. Dry according to your dehydrator manufacturers instructions.
8. Other flavors as follows:.
9. Hot and spicy - mix Louisiana hot sauce with water to thin a bit. Coat strips and dry.
10. BBQ - thin your favorite bottled bbq sauce with water. Coat strips and dry.
11. Teriyaki - thin bottled teriyaki sauce with soya sauce. Coat strips and dry.
12.  

My modified recipe:

5 lbs. ground beef (can't tell you the fat content other than to say it was FAT this time - hoping for a smaller cow next time).

4 1/2 teaspoons kosher or sea salt

3/4 teaspoon garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

1/2 teaspoon ground chipotle pepper

Frank's hot sauce (to taste)

Mix ground beef with salt, garlic powder, red pepper flakes, chipotle pepper and enough buffalo sauce to season it but not make it too wet to stick together.  I used the dough hook on my KitchenAid to mix it for about 5-10 minutes.

From there you can use whatever means you want to form the jerky.  I saw many recipes that call for a jerky gun - I don't personally have a jerky gun - but I do have parchment paper and a good marble rolling pin.  So I rolled balls of the mixture between two pieces parchment paper to about 1/4 inch thickness and sliced to size and shape desired.  Some I transferred to my dehydrator (still on the parchment paper because it's too thin to move without breaking) and some I placed on a cookie sheet and baked on the lowest possible temperature.  The oven - not a good idea.  I don't know how it turned out for others but I wouldn't do that again.  Waste of beef...  The dehydrator?  Six hours later I removed the parchment paper and turned the jerky over to dry a bit more and voila! Great tasting buffalo jerky.

The immediate feedback from the family and friends is that it's very good.  Dear son took some to work tonight to see what they think of it.  I'm anxious to see what they think. 

Give it a try and let me know what you think!  

Susan