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.
- 1lb beef bottom round
- 1 tbsp molasses
- 2 tbsp pure maple syrup
- 2 tbsp granulated sugar
- 1 tbsp liquid smoke
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp pepper
- ½ cup of cold water
- 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
- 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.
For more in depth directions on how to dry your beef jerky, visit my page Jerky Making Methods.
“Pure” maple syrup jerky and it’s got molasses and sugar in it? You must be jerking me around.
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!
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
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
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.
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.
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?)
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.
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.
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!
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.
ooh also brown sugar, not white granulated.
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!