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Photo Stefano A. from Toronto, Canada, CC BY 2.0

Jerky and dried meat

Lean moose, caribou or beef cut thin, heated safe, and dried into light food that rides in a pack.

What you need

How

  1. Trim off every bit of fat you can see. Fat does not dry and goes rancid.
  2. Put the meat in the freezer for an hour or two until it is firm. It slices thin and even that way.
  3. Slice it about 5 millimetres thick. With the grain it chews tough and long; across the grain it is tender and breaks.
  4. Salt it or marinate it in the fridge for a few hours or overnight.
  5. Heat it safe. Bring the strips to 74 degrees Celsius inside, in the oven or by simmering them in the marinade, before you dry them. Low drying heat alone does not kill everything.
  6. Lay the strips on racks, not touching, and dry at about 60 degrees Celsius with the oven door propped open a crack, four to eight hours or more.
  7. It is done when a cooled piece bends and cracks but does not snap in two, and shows no wet spots.
  8. Cool it, blot off any fat, and seal it in jars or bags.

Do and don't

Do
  • Keep hands, knives and boards clean. Raw meat is where the trouble starts.
  • Keep a few weeks' worth in a cool dry place and freeze the rest.
  • Check the bag now and then. Moisture beading inside means it was not dry enough.
Don't
  • Do not dry bear, or any meat you are not sure of, without the heat step. Bear can carry trichinella, and freezing does not kill it.
  • Do not start with ground meat. Strips are easier to dry safe.
  • Do not seal it airtight while it is still moist, or keep it warm and damp.

Watch for

Danger
  • Mould, a sour smell or a sticky surface means throw it out.
  • Home jerky is not the store bought kind, which is made with cures and tested. Treat yours as keeping weeks, not years.
  • Meat from an animal that was kept warm too long or handled dirty does not get better by drying.

Notes

A handful of jerky weighs almost nothing and carries a lot of food. Moose from the fall hunt makes the best of it.

See Packing food for a trip, Hanging and cooling meat and Bottled moose.

jerkymoosepreservingtrail food

Updated 2026-09-29

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