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Love sweet jerky? Than this maple syrup jerky is your new favorite jerky recipe!!! I have never made jerky with maple syrup, but I am glad I gave it a go. It tastes fantastic!
When I eat pancakes or waffles there tends to be a small amount of food and a plate full of syrup. I love maple syrup, almost to the point of drinking it straight from the bottle. A little much? Yeah, I guess you are right. Well good thing I like it that much, because otherwise we would not have this amazing jerky recipe!
Drying took about 6 hours in the oven at a temperature of 170°, the lowest my oven will go. Always remember to stick a wooden spoon in the door to prop it open for air circulation. I used the toothpick method where the jerky hangs in the oven instead of laying it flat on a rack. Either way will work well. If you want more information on making jerky, check out my page on how to make jerky.
If you really want a strong maple syrup taste, double the syrup amount to allow this jerky to REALLY shine! Make sure to use 100% pure maple syrup, it really makes a difference.
Leave a comment on how your jerky turned out! Happy jerky making folks...
For more in depth directions on how to dry your beef jerky, visit my page Jerky Making Methods.
Ingredients
Lean Meat
Marinade
- 1 tablespoon molasses
- 2 tablespoon pure maple syrup
- 2 tablespoon granulated sugar
- 1 tablespoon liquid smoke
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon pepper
- ½ cup cold water
Optional
- ¼ teaspoon 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 molasses, maple syrup, sugar, liquid smoke, salt, pepper and cold water in a medium size bowl or ziplock bag. Mix well. *Use a blender makes this easy and well mixed.
- Remove the meat from the freezer and slice ¼" strips against the grain. Cut with the grain for a chewier jerky. Or skip the freezing phase and use a Jerky Slicer for evenly sliced strips.
- Add sliced beef to the mixture and marinate for 6-24 hours in the refrigerator.
- After the meat has finished marinating, remove from refrigerator and pierce one end of each jerky strip with a toothpick.
- Line the bottom of your oven with aluminum foil for easy clean up.
- Put the top rack of your oven to the highest mount and hang the jerky. You can lay flat on a rack as well instead of hanging if you prefer.
- Dry at 170 degrees for 6 hours with the oven door cracked.
- Jerky will be finished when it bends and cracks but does not break in half.
Nutrition
For more in depth directions on how to dry your beef jerky, visit my page Jerky Making Methods.
JC says
I love this recipe. I used all maple syrup ( no molasses ) and used brown sugar for the first batch and for the second I used Mikes Hot Honey instead of the maple syrup and molasses, with brown sugar again instead of the white sugar. Both turned out really delicious. Your site is so helpful and I have enjoyed all the recipes I have tried. Thanks!
Will says
Great! Glad you like the recipe and found sound nice tweaks to enhance the recipe. Thanks for coming by and checking out all the recipes!
Erik says
Just used syrup, splash Worcestershire sauce, splash of Bragg's amino acids, added hatch green chilies to the bag containing the marinade.
Sweet and spicy goodness. Low sodium. Chilies dehydrated well and made for an extra flavorful snack.
John says
Came across your recipe yesterday.Got Excalibur dehydrator for Christmas and this is my third go at it.drying your recipe today thanks.
Will says
Awesome John! That is a great Christmas present!!!
IthacaNancy says
I used more maple syrup and less water and granulated sugar (and no liquid smoke). I was using a powerful borrowed dehydrator, and I let it run overnight. The jerky ended up cracking/breaking in two, rather than bending when it was flexed after it was finished. So I suppose I let it go too long. It is mildly flavored, which is probably best as my husband doesn't like sweet food very much. I've made a breakfast of it, and enjoyed it. The dogs loved the pieces that fell to the ground when I was working on sealing the jerky in FoodSaver bags. It will make a great snack when I'm away from home. I've enjoyed the website and will return in the future. Thanks!
DEBI K DENNEY says
Could you use this recipe with ham?
Will says
You could totally use this recipe with ham/pork!
Joe says
Just completed my third run of this recipe. My next attempt will be with pure maple syrup. I used what I had on hand. This run I used a sirloin tip roast, upped the syrup to six tablespoon's. Taste is subjective so what I like the next person might not.
I used brown sugar instead of granulated. This recipe included coarse black pepper, Prague # 1 curing sale and Morton's curing salt. After brining and paper toweled I re-applied the course black pepper and then cold smoked with a mix of alder and mesquite. One pan load in enough. Oven dried at 170 with the door closed for one hour and the door was cracked until they were done. I made this for our neighborhood Christmas party and it came in in second place behind Dos pepper. It is now becoming my favorite recipe to date. I think it needed a little more salt so on the next run I will tweak it some more.
I am becoming a Jerky Junkie.
Thanks for the site
Joe
Joe says
I have been making this recipe every week without fail since before Christmas. I have tried sirloin, London broil, bottom round, top round and eye of round. I have tried cross cutting and cutting with the grain. Eye of round produced the best bite for me, it did not seem to matter which way it was cut. The average size of the roasts my wife comes home from the store with is around 3 1/2 pounds. I cut them in half and have enough for two weeks. The recipe had to be modified for the extra meat. I tweaked and tweaked this recipe until I have created a product that is unbelievable.
3/4 cup water, 6 tblspn pure maple syrup,1 and 1/2 tblspn dark molasses, 2 tblspn
brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon Prague powder, 2 teaspoon curing salt, 1 tblspn course black pepper. Cold smoked and then finished in the oven.
Cody says
Daaaaang this is fantastic, well done. Got a dehydrator for Christmas and I've made a few different batches and this is by far our favorite. Do you have any recommendations for using this as a ground beef recipe, the SO likes.softer jerky but also loves this recipe! Thanks for the great site!
Will says
Congrats on the new dehydrator Cody. The world of making jerky is a great one! I would just omit the water and keep everything else the same. Should come out alright, but let me know after you make it as I have never made this one with ground beef before.
Cody says
Followed your advice and while it was a bit unwieldy using the jerky gun the final product was fantastic. It was real sticky and it didn't come out of the jerky gun smoothly, that being said the results were great.
I also used the original recipe on some eye of round, added 2 tablespoons of Sriracha, and it made a fantastic sweet and hot jerky. Going to be my new go to when I'm not experimenting.
Cody A says
Thanks for posting the recipe. I have my meat cut and plan on curing it in the morning. If I use the optional cure should I always reduce the amount of regular salt it calls for in the recipe? Although should I be using kosher salt? Thanks!
Will says
I need to go back and distinguish what salt to use on these recipes. I like using either kosher or sea salt. Most recipes are made with sea salt, and you are correct in subtracting the curing salt amount from the total salt the recipe calls for.
Neil says
I doubled the recipe, omitted salt & pepper and doubled the maple syrup and added 1/2 tsp of cure salt for the 2 deer roasts I cut up. 3-4 lbs raw & cut. overnight soak in salt water since it's wild venison. Then drain, marinade 24hrs, then oven dried.
They came out well: Maple flavored crimson meat candy.
Hint of salt would've improved my results. But taste is very meaty, sweet and mild jerky. Thicker cuts are very chewy (maple gummy deer?).
Additional benefit: my place smells like IHOP.
4 stars b/c I prefer savory. excellent recipe tho.
Neil says
ooh also brown sugar, not white granulated.
Will says
Glad it turned out well. I like seeing people tweak the recipes to their personal taste. Can't complain when the house smells like IHOP, that maple smell is fantastic!
Terry says
Just WOW!!! I just made a batch with lean moose meat and it's awesome. 4 lbs yielded approximately 2 lbs of jerky. I also made some with ground beaver meat, still in the oven, after 5 hours the beaver jerky has shrunk about half the size because I couldn't choose the fat quantity in it, and the meat itself is way fatter than moose.
Note: for people that don't like a small pepper after taste (not really hot), the pepper quantity could be reduced to half or 3/4.
Pros: I love it and it's super tasty
Cons: Although is delicious, for "pure maple", I would like it to be a little more mapley. I will soon try a small batch by changing granulated sugar and molasses to maple sugar and more syrup (what are your toughts on this?)
Will says
Awesome! How did that Beaver jerky turn out?! I never would have thought to make some jerky out of ground beaver meat. Love hearing about crazy jerky recipes and meat. I will definitely have to try making beaver jerky sometime! Now I just need to find a beaver.... Not too many down here in South Texas. Ha.
Terry says
The beaver has as a typical taste to it, but it turned out great. It wasn't me who ground the meat on that one, so there was a bit more fat than usual and the jerky shrunk to 1/2 the size of origin. Between beef and moose, the meat has a taste and texture that is similar, but the beaver meat is way more greasier, specially a beaver caught in late fall like this one. I'll be trying black bear also pretty soon. I made 5 kinds of jerky and the maple one ran out way before the rest.
Will says
Wow, love hearing about the crazy jerky, thanks for coming back and letting me know how it was! I bet some black bear jerky would be great.. Let me know how that turns out!
Julle says
Black bear meat jerky? Have you heard of trichinosis?
jeff says
@julie why are you such a worrying b i t c h like no-one cares we aren't gonna get it I've made hundreds of pound of black bear jerky and I'm fine so unless you or a family member have got it shut up
Terry Landry says
Damn! I looked for this kind of recipe about 2 weeks ago and could't find what I wanted. I definitely trying this one as soon as I can with moose meat. Will be back with comments. Thank
Terry Landry says
Your recipe asks for liquid smoke, If I look on Cabelas website, I have 4 choices, Apple wood, Cherry wood, Hickory and Mesquite. Do you recomend one more than others? Also, there's no cure, I figure that we don't need it?
Thanks
Will says
I normally only use hickory or mesquite because it is the easiest to find in grocery stores. I use the hickory for more sweet jerky and mesquite for spicy recipes. I would go with the hickory liquid smoke for this recipe. You do not NEED cure for any recipe. About half of the recipes on here will have cure and the other half will not. If you want to use cure, definitely use it even if the recipe doesn't call for it. If you decide not to use cure, just make sure to heat the meat to an internal temperature of 160F to make sure you kill any potential bacteria in the meat.
Terry says
Thanks, Hickory is the one I bought, but I'm glad you explained the cure part for me a bit. I actually bought oven trays at the same time, so I'll go without cure on this next one...should try it soon.
Alex says
"Pure" maple syrup jerky and it's got molasses and sugar in it? You must be jerking me around.
Will says
I see what you did there; and I like it. Ha. Definitely not "jerking" you around. The "Pure" maple syrup title comes from using Pure maple syrup in the recipe. Enjoy!