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This Mexican Heat Beef Jerky is made with spicy Serrano peppers and red pepper flakes to light your lips on fire and satisfy that spice craving.
I am a big fan of Serrano peppers, mainly eating them in picante and pico de gallo sauces here in South Texas. They are from Mexico and their spice is a little hotter than a jalapeno. What I like the most about them is that they are spicy, but pack a great taste as well. I love eating spicy jerky, but it has to taste good too!
I sliced some beef eye of round against the grain making this jerky have an easier chew. The Serrano peppers were diced, seeds left in, then added to the marinade to make sure this jerky has a strong spicy flavor. Feel free to adjust the amount of peppers to suit your spice preference.
I decided to use my Excalibur Dehydrator when drying this jerky. The dehydrator is my favorite way of drying jerky and the Excalibur is my favorite dehydrator. This recipe will turn out well using other drying methods, you can see more information on drying on the jerky making methods page.
After dehydrating for 5 hours, these bad boys were ready to be eaten. They turned out great! It had the perfect amount of spice for my liking and a great chew. So get some beef and give this Mexican heat beef jerky a try!
For more in depth directions on how to dry your beef jerky, visit my page Jerky Making Methods
Mexican Heat Beef Jerky
Ingredients
Lean Meat
Marinade
- 2 tbsp worcestershire sauce
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tbsp brown sugar
- 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
- 2 tsp red pepper flakes
- 3 Serrano peppers diced & seeds left in
- 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
Optional
- 1/4 tsp Curing Salt Prague Powder #1
Instructions
- Trim all visible fat from the beef and place in freezer for an hour or two to partially freeze.
- While the meat is in the freezer, combine the worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, brown sugar, smoked paprika, red pepper flakes, diced Serrano peppers, and red wine vinegar in a bowl or ziplock bag and mix well. Or skip the freezing phase and use a Jerky Slicer for even sliced strips.
- Remove the meat from the freezer and slice ¼" strips against the grain. Cut with the grain for more chew.
- Add sliced beef to the mixture in a ziplock bag or bowl and marinate for 8-24 hours in the refrigerator.
- After the meat has finished marinating, remove from refrigerator and strain excess marinade and pat dry the beef strips with paper towels
- Dry with your favorite jerky making method. I used my dehydrator and dried for 5 hours at 160 degrees.
- The jerky is finished when it bends and cracks, but does not break in half.
For more in depth directions on how to dry your beef jerky, visit my page Jerky Making Methods
I am just getting into the jerky making process I am smoking it in my Rec Tec pellet grill, I also purchased a LEM jerky gun upon your recommendations. I do like to experiment with the spicy recipes. How would you recommend incorporating this recipe or others like this that include jalapeños/peppers into the ground beef jerky process? In your ground beef post you suggested that with the marinates you might need to double up the dry rubs. Has this been a pretty consistent finding? Thank you.
I find that doubling up on the spices does help ground beef jerky have the right amount of flavor. When it comes to peppers, I would keep the pepper amount the same. When making whole meat jerky you lose a lot of the sliced peppers when straining the meat, but with ground beef jerky, every pepper piece will be in the jerky. Have fun with it and experiment; that’s the best part of making homemade jerky!
How long will this jerky keep for? I am going to vacuum pack it and send it to a couple of friends that are deployed.
It depends on how you store it and how you make it. Check out my How Long Does Beef Jerky Last page for more information. This would be a great package to get while deployed!
I tried this recipe yesterday and my jerky had absolutely no flavor. Any thoughts about what happened? I followed the recipe to a tee and it ended up marinating 30+ hours as I was dehydrating the rig hand jerky, which turned out great.
My wife and I are huge Pluckers fans and routinely get Fire in the Hole wings so, being a fellow Austinite, you can understand our love for hot and spicy anything.
I am not sure why it would have no flavor at all…. I am the first to admit that even though I love spicy stuff, I can not handle REAL spicy stuff; but this does have a nice kick with the peppers and red pepper flakes. I haven’t made this recipe in a while, I will try to make this recipe again and see if it turns out as good as I remember or if it needs a little tweaking. Glad you like the Rig Hand Jerky, that’s a great one!
Did you ever get a chance to revisit this recipe? I made this last night and outside of the heat , I agree with Tim- this doesn’t have much flavor. I like the idea of this recipe, but it needs something. Let us know if you tweak the recipe, i would like to try it again. Thanks!
I haven’t had a chance to remake this recipe. Been super busy lately putting together new recipes for a recipe book. I will try to get to it as soon as I’m finished though. Also, drying varies all the time, so make sure to start checking your jerky at about the 3.5 to 4 hour mark.
I am diabetic and see that most of your recipes call for sugar. Is there a problem with leaving out the sugar?
Leaving out the sugar in this recipe probably could be done, but will definitely change the taste. I wouldn’t recommend omitting the sugar in most of the recipes that call for it because the main taste is suppose to be sweet. Check out the spicier recipes, they normally don’t have sugar.
Mexican Heat Beef Jerky
If i want to make 25 lbs of this what is the measurement for it?
I have never made that much jerky in one go, but normally just multiplying the number of ingredients to the amount of lbs you want works just fine. The peppers might not need to be multiplied as much, so start with less and adjust to taste. Make sure you make a little bit of a recipe to try it before making that much!
What is the best way to use peppers with jerky? Should I dry them out or just dice and blend? Thanks. Love your site, since I started smoking jerky I cant get enough of it, your site is the BEST!
Hey Derrick! I like putting them in a blender with the rest of the marinade and blending it all together. I think this gives the most flavor and the best distribution of the peppers on the jerky so every piece is the same spice level. Glad you are loving the site!