Deer Jerky Marinade

Want to make delicious jerky right in your own kitchen? This simple deer jerky marinade recipe is the perfect base for your project! 

This jerky marinade recipe is tangy and delicious, using just a few ingredients you likely already have in your pantry. I also discuss how you can customize the flavor to make it your own in the bullet points below.

When we were kids, my siblings and I would scavenge as much venison from the carcasses of deer to make jerky whenever my dad brought them home. 

We came up with all kinds of marinades for that deer, and sometimes my brothers would even marinate it in straight hot sauce, which I found annoying – spiciness mixed with flavor is great, but that teenage boy urge to find out how much heat you can handle never appealed to me. Then we’d hang it in our wood stove’s oven with the door open all night to dry.

As an adult, I have to say I’m a little more scientific with how I approach jerky making, and now I have my choice of much better cuts of meat, and make both old fashioned deer jerky, as well as beef jerky. 

I’ve also learned how to make jerky with ground meat as well as thinly cut strips, and how to make jerky in the oven as well as using a forced air dehydrator.  

The truth is, the ways to make jerky have endless variations – and there’s no one right way. 

As long as you follow safe meat handling guidelines that is. Keep it clean, and keep it cold until you put it in the dehydrator, then get it dry before it can start growing bacteria. 

Deer Jerky Marinade

• Here are a few things to know before we get to the recipe:
• Don’t let the name fool you – this deer jerky marinade is a great base for either deer, or beef jerky
• A little goes a long way. one cup of liquid isn’t a lot, but you don’t need your deer meat swimming in it. You just need to cover it. So mix it up, and squish it all in.
• If you’re using ground deer meat, instead of soaking your meat, you’ll want to mix in about 1/3 cup of marinade per pound of meat, similar to what we do in our sweet and spicy jerky recipe, as well as our teriyaki jerky recipe. 
• This marinade is base – in other words, feel free to add more flavors to it. Add hot sauce, add spices – make it your own. That said, I do personally like it just the way it is. Either way, it’s hard to go wrong. 
• When cutting meat for jerky, it’s best to cut about 3/8 inch thick, and make sure you cut across the grain – jerky cut with the grain will be very tough to chew. 
• My mother-in-law has an Excalibur dehydrator and it’s pretty awesome, but I have a simple Nesco food dehydrator, and it gets the job done just as well – even if it doesn’t use space quite as efficiently.

Now let’s get on with the recipe!

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