What Is Beef, dried aka beef erky and How Can I Use It?
Beef, dried aka beef erky is easier to cook with than it looks. Here's how to choose, use, and store it, what to substitute, and 3 recipes to get you started.
Key Points
- Dried beef, or jerky, is lean beef dried until almost no moisture remains.
- This record's "beef erky" name is a typo for jerky; the two mean the same thing.
- Lean beef is used because fat turns rancid while lean muscle dries clean.
- Eat it as a snack, or rehydrate it in stews for a deep smoky-beef note.
- Sealed jerky keeps for months at room temperature; reseal opened bags and use soon.
What is beef, dried aka beef erky?
Dried beef (jerky) is lean beef that has been seasoned and dried until almost all the moisture is gone, leaving a chewy, concentrated, intensely beefy strip that keeps without refrigeration. The drying is both a preservation method and a flavor concentrator.
This record is filed under the misspelled name "beef erky," which is simply dried beef, or jerky. The two terms cover the same idea: beef with the water removed so bacteria cannot grow.
It is one of the oldest ways to keep meat. Traditional jerky uses thin strips of lean beef, salted and air-dried or smoked, because fat goes rancid while lean muscle dries clean.
How to Use It
Most jerky is eaten as-is, straight out of the bag as a high-protein snack. The flavor leans salty and savory, often with sweet or smoky seasonings worked in.
In cooking, dried beef rehydrates in liquid to flavor a dish. Chopped and simmered into a stew, it softens and lends a deep, smoky-beef note, the idea behind a rustic Tom's Jerky Stew. Minced fine, it scatters over salads or eggs or a baked potato for a salty, chewy hit.
The thing to remember is that it is already salt-heavy and fully seasoned, so go easy on extra salt and let it cook into the dish before you adjust.
Substitutes and Storage
For a snack, any dried meat covers it: turkey and pork and game jerky all eat the same way. In cooking, finely chopped chipped beef gives a similar salty, cured note, though it is thinner and less chewy than true jerky.
Commercial jerky in a sealed bag keeps for months at room temperature, which is the whole point of drying meat.
Once opened, reseal it tightly and use it within a week or two, since exposure to air softens it and lets it stale. Homemade jerky, usually cured less aggressively, is best kept in the fridge and eaten sooner.
Quick facts
- In Chinese
- 牛肉，干又名牛erky
- British (UK) term
- Beef, dried aka beef erky
- en français
- boeuf, aka viande séchée Erky
- en español
- carne de vaca, carne de vacuno Erky aka seca
Recipes using beef, dried aka beef erky
There are 3 recipes that contain this ingredient.
Tom's Jerky Stew
Tom's jerky stew: a Native-American style stew of beef or buffalo jerky simmered with hominy, onion, and potatoes. The frontier survival meal that turns dried meat into deeply savory comfort food.
