As a Pennsylvania native I grew up enjoying dried beef ... a product originated and fairly locally made by Amish (and other) people in eastern PA. My parents bought it at local supermarkets in western PA and we used it to make yummy sandwiches. Years later I found the best dried beef at a place named Fisher's Country Store in Cessna, PA, and it was not as dry as the products sold in supermarkets, so it was perfect for making great sandwiches. I also used to order take-out at Leo and Jimmie's delicatessen in Wilmington, DE; specifically dried beef, sliced tomato and black pepper with mayonnaise on a long roll. Totally delicious! The best dried beef is smoky, not too dry, and fairly salty, but not too salty.
Alas, most of the USA and much of the rest of the world lack dried beef as an available product (unless you order it at absurd prices via the Internet). I was quite disappointed to learn that sad fact, though that type of reality is common across a lot of meat products and other regional or national specialty products. Our federal import laws typically restrict the purchase of meats made in foreign countries to a limited number of import companies. The private individual is denied the freedom to bring meats from, for instance, France, Germany or Italy, into the USA, that might have been purchased during a vacation to Europe. Well, Switzerland has an air dried beef product named Bundnerfleisch that I found in an international delicatessen in California, but it was quite expensive, too dry, and it lacked a smoky flavor. That is atypical. It was probably too old/beyond its shelf life. Charcuterie made in Europe is almost always great ... quite superior to most of our own Charcuterie, and of many varieties.
Recently (in 2024), I decided to buy an electric smoker and make my own dried beef. Why? Fisher's no longer ships products to out of state customers, and the dried beef sold in local supermarkets is expensive and too dry, yet supermarket prices are low compared to prices I see for high quality dried beef via the Internet (from $26 to $72 per pound!). Thus, the approach of making well what I can no longer reasonably buy, for cost and/or quality or availability considerations, is one major reason behind my creation of high quality Food Nirvana recipes.
My starting recipe for making dried beef came from a website selling a particular brand of electric smoker. Note that I looked at various recipes but decided to make the one that appeared to me most likely to result in a product most like that sold at Fisher's Country Store. But that was guessing on my part. I also eliminated a few seasoning ingredients that I believed would not produce the right taste. I varied times of certain procedures. By the time of this writing I had learned enough, having done the entire process successfully, to make this recipe a Food Nirvana teaching recipe. So it is ... take the time to enjoy it and to learn the essentials. You will be glad you did.
I now have solid results to report ... Success! I am very pleased with the dried beef I made, doing what I did ... but like many things in life I noted a few improvements were in order. That is, I have put small procedural variations into the recipe below that reflect my analysis of my first attempt to make dried beef. Overall I am delighted. One thing I learned is the initial smoking time should be fine if limited to 8 to 10 hours instead of 12 hours if I want to somewhat increase the moistness of the final product.
The dry curing period for the 3" diameter eye round roasts should be 9 days, not 6 days. Why? The penetration of the curing chemicals is only about 1/4" per day, or 6 days, plus three additional days, just to be sure the cure has fully penetrated the roast. You can, of course, decide to cut the eye round roasts in half lengthwise, which reduces the thickness to 1 1/2" ... and those thinner pieces of beef will cure easily within 6 days. But note that thinner cuts of meat are likely to lose more moisture during smoking, and later refrigerator drying, so you have to decide if you want drier or more moist dried beef.
The final drying period for the smoked eye roasts in the refrigerator is very important as the intensity of the taste and the color and moistness change a lot with only a two day difference in the final drying period. I tried three days and five days of refrigerator drying and the five day dried beef came out right on target for expected weight yield of 65%. The taste was intense and the color dark red, with less moisture. That contrasts with a weight yield of 70% with only three days of refrigerator drying time. The taste was mild and the color dark pink with more moisture. Ultimately you can choose what you want ... mild taste and more moist, or, intense taste and drier.
Note that when large cuts of meat like hams are cured commercially, a brine containing the curing agent is injected into the deeper parts of the meat. Why? There is a limit to how far an externally applied cure can reasonably be expected to penetrate flesh. In general, do not try to cure pieces of meat thicker than 3" using the coating curing method described in this recipe. Instead, look for brining methods and injections of curing chemicals and then decide if you are willing to invest time and money using brining/injection techniques/equipment.
Alas! At a later time I found myself with the meat thickness problem when I had eye round roasts with tube diameters of 4" and a bit more. I had already started a dry cure and I had figured I'd simply add extra days to get full penetration of the curing product. Then, as I thought about it, it was foolish to expect full penetration. And the loss if the penetration was incomplete would be bad. So, what to do?
Now I am going "off the reservation" in describing what I did to guarantee full penetration. When I say "off the reservation" I mean nowhere have I read anything from anybody that would approve of what I did. What I did was steal curing brine from some packages of other meats I was curing. I then used a brine injector and put the needle straight up inside the center of each eye roast, and then I injected two ounces of curing brine through the center area of the meat, for each eye roast, withdrawing the needle slowly as I kept up pressure to continue dispensing curing brine. The net result? Perfection! Those eye round roasts were perfect in cure penetration. I knew because I cut them in half crosswise and the results were identical for the three eye round roasts. Then I was able to proceed with smoking the cured meats, confident that they would turn out to be delicious. And so they were, after their drying period that followed smoking. Think, totally delicious! Also safe to eat.
I suppose I could call what I did a hybrid curing method, but I believe the experts would scoff at me. They instead recommend doing wet curing, not dry curing, and taking as long as required to have the curing chemical (Prague powder #1) penetrate to the center of the meat. While I have no complaint regarding the choice of wet curing, what I did was guarantee success using dry curing combined with a curing brine injection. It worked. Beyond that, even with wet curing, injection of curing brine becomes necessary all over the surfaces of the meat when the thickness exceeds 4 inches, and that process is not for amateurs, for it can easily produce cured and uncured center areas, or even meat that is too wet internally following curing. The bottom line is that what I did makes a lot of sense without any fear of missing areas or too much brine, but my method was appropriate only given the geometry of an eye round roast ... namely, a tube of even diameter along 90 percent of the length of the eye roast.
Okay, now let's get back onto the reservation ... and return to the experiences of the first attempt to make dried beef.
Given three days of refrigeration drying time, my yield of dried beef, after trimming off fairly hard dried surface meat, was about 70% of the initial starting weight of one eye round roast. I think that will increase slightly with a shorter smoking time of 8 to 10 hours instead of 12 hours. The taste is delicious though mild, it is quite smoky (you can control that variable by choosing how much you use in wood chips), and the moisture level is almost what I want. I am looking for a bit more final moisture and that should be achieved via the 8 to 10 hour smoking time change, plus the control of refrigerator drying time. The trim waste after smoking was only 2 ounces, from a starting weight of 2.5 pounds of beef. In short, I recommend 10 hours of smoking and 5 days of refrigeration drying time.
Now, about the economics of making dried beef ... My cost for the beef was $5 per pound, and the other ingredients cost less than $1, including the hickory chips used in smoking. So my final cost for one 2.5 lb. eye roast, plus other ingredients and wood chips, was $13.50, and my final yield was 1 pound 12 ounces, or, 28 ounces of dried beef from the 2.5 pound eye round roast. That computes to 48 cents per ounce ... or about $2 for a four ounce bag ... roughly 25% of the price at the supermarket for four ounces of very dry beef. That is significant savings and a superior product by making it at home. I need not describe again the absurd prices found via the Internet.
A final word about the use of the curing agent, Morton's Tender Quick®, is appropriate. Do not use more (or less) than specified (one tablespoon per pound of meat) and do not allow extended skin contact time with the mixture while using it, as the product contains sodium nitrite, which is an essential chemical for curing, but which is also poisonous if consumed in excess either when eating the cured meat or by extended time of skin contact. I routinely wear nitrile gloves when I work with curing agents and I recommend that you do the same, especially if meat curing becomes a routine activity for you.
Note, however, that you routinely ingest sodium nitrite in moderate amounts naturally from fresh leafy vegetables like spinach, romaine and kale, plus root vegetables like beets, celery, carrots and radishes, not to mention cabbage, lettuce and celery, so let's avoid the witchhunt about cured meat products and demanding the eating of only nature's bounty. Moderation is the key consideration in most of what we do, rather than avoidance based on fear instead of firm, proven facts.
Ingredients:
2, 2.5 lbs. Eye Round Roasts, defatted
5 tbsp. of Morton's Tender Quick® cure product (for curing multiple types of meats, etc.)
5 tbsp. of brown sugar
2 tbsp. of black pepper
1 tbsp. of garlic powder
Equipment:
Electric smoker and one cup (or slightly more) of Hickory wood chips
Vacuum sealer and two 10" x 12" vacuum seal bags (one each for each eye roast, used during curing)
10" x 12" aluminum foil tray (to place on a lower shelf under the eye roasts during smoking, to avoid soiling the interior of the electric smoker with meat drippings)
Electric Bluetooth wireless thermometer set (remember to test it first: charge the batteries ... download and install the software to your cell phone, etc.)
Adjustable electric meat slicer (to get very thin slices of dried beef, like slightly less than or equal to 1/32nd of an inch)
6"x 8" vacuum seal bags to briefly hold the sliced dried beef in convenient serving amounts when you cut some slices from the larger piece of dried beef, which should also be vacuum sealed after each time you cut slices from it.
Directions:
Trim all the fat and sinew/silver skin from the eye round roasts. Note that silver skin (shiny membrane that is tight against the flesh) will impede the penetration of the curing agent. You want to avoid that problem. Also, surface fat will reduce the shelf life of the cured meat.
Turn on a kitchen scale. It will read 0.0 ounces. Put a small bowl on the kitchen scale. Record the weight. Then remove the bowl and mix all the dry ingredients together in the bowl and weigh the combination. Subtract the weight of the empty bowl from the combination weight. Spoon out one half of the weight of the ingredients into a second bowl while the first bowl remains on the scale. You now have half of the mixture in each of two bowls so you are ready to use each to coat the pieces of eye round roast.
Coat each eye round roast evenly all over the meat surface with the mixture of curing agent and seasoning ingredients.
Put each coated eye round roast into a 10" x 12" vacuum seal bag, cut away any excess bag (if any) with scissors, and vacuum seal it.
Mark the start date for the curing period on each vacuum sealed bag.
Mark the end date of curing for 9 days later on each vacuum sealed bag. Why 9 days? The eye round roasts will be about 3" thick and it will take around 9 days of curing to be certain to have the cure reach the center of each. So be safe and cure the eye round roasts for 9 days.
Store the curing eye round roasts in the refrigerator and turn them over once per day.
At the end of the curing period cut away the vacuum seal bags and carefully rinse all of the surface ingredients from the meat. Rub the surfaces of the eye round roasts as necessary while rinsing to remove all of the curing/seasoning mixture.
Dry the cured eye round roasts with paper towels.
Preheat the electric smoker to 275 degrees F.
Put the cured eye round roasts close together on a high shelf in the smoker, and on the shelf below, place the 10" x 12" aluminum foil tray.
Fill the wood box of the electric smoker with (one cup or a bit more of) hickory wood chips, close the lid, and put it into the smoker wood port.
Close and fasten the smoker door. Wait roughly five minutes for the electric heating element to get the wood chips smoking (you should see smoke coming out of the smoker vent), then reduce the smoker heat to 130 degrees F.
Close the vent half way to provide a limited exit for the generated smoke and also to keep the wood chips smoking but not being consumed in flames.
Smoke the eye round roasts for 8 to 10 hours, or even up to 12 hours, at 130 degrees F. Note that you will see most of the smoke during the first hour.
Open the smoker and insert a wireless thermometer probe into the center (thickest part, namely the thick end) of one of the roasts.
Close the smoker and increase the smoker heat to 160 degrees F.
Monitor the internal temperature of the meat using the wireless thermometer base unit (called a repeater [device that picks up a weak wireless signal and amplifies it, sending it on to a more distant viewing device]) and likely your cell phone. Note that this type of wireless thermometer system will most likely require you to download and install a monitoring software package from either the Google Play Store or the Apple Store, depending on whether you have an Android cell phone or an Apple iPhone.
When the internal temperature of the meat is 135 degrees F, turn off the smoker and remove the dried beef to cool to room temperature. Why 135 degrees F? Cured meats like eye round roasts need to be cooked following curing, and 135 degrees F internal temperature is the temperature for what we usually describe as medium rare to medium for cooked beef. If you want, you can wait until the internal temperature is 140 degrees F, but that will result in drier smoked beef. Different safe internal cooking temperatures apply to other types of meat, fowl or seafood.
Once the smoker has cooled (with the door open), remember to clean the smoker interior with a dish cloth, warm water and a mild detergent.
Once cool, refrigerate the dried beef for three to five days, uncovered, to complete the drying. I recommend five days.
Trim the completely dry ends and thin side shavings from each dried beef roast, exposing the dark pink interior that you will use as dried beef. The amount trimmed will be only shallow shavings and that is good. You can, of course, retain the dark exterior from the sides of the smoked meat if you want even more intense smoked flavor.
Use the electric meat slicer to slice the trimmed dried beef roasts very thinly cross grain, with a thickness of no more than 1/32nd of an inch.
Put the sliced dried beef into a 6" x 8" vacuum seal bag and vacuum seal it, and keep it in the refrigerator until you use it. Plus, refrigerator shelf life is roughly three months (and probably longer), for the uncut portion of the dried beef, so keep it vacuum sealed too, though it is almost certain the meat will be eaten within a few weeks. Freezer shelf life can be whatever you want it to be.
Use the dried beef in sandwiches or in making creamed dried beef over toast. There are numerous other nice recipe ideas you can find via the Internet.
Enjoy!