0 Shares

This garlic flavored bison jerky recipe is a delicious version that is easy to make will tickle your tastebuds!

Bison, often called American buffalo was made for jerky, and you can’t convince me otherwise. Since it’s naturally lean, it dries and preserves easily, and makes a great high protein snack. It’s my go-to when we need to take food on the go with us.

We make a lot of deer jerky with game we hunt, and beef jerky with our grass-fed beef. But I love to make jerky with any meat I can get my hands on, going so far as to make jerky with bacon.

There’s never too much jerky!

For this recipe, I was able to purchase bison locally run my experiments with.

Here are my main observations:

Bison is very lean. with super lean meat, it’s honestly easier to slice it into 3/8-1/4 inch thick strips while half frozen, marinade, and then dry the meat. The reason is that the lack of fat makes ground bison a little more crumbling.

But with that said, using ground bison is absolutely fine! These photos were taken with jerky made from ground bison. It’s easy enough to do by mixing in the seasonings, then rolling flat between two sheets of parchment paper, and scoring with a pizza cutter. You do have to be a little more careful as you move the jerky from your table to the dehydrator that the strips don’t crumble.

On the up side with that, you end up with jerky that is very easy to chew. For me personally, that’s a big win.

Ingredients for making bison jerky

Bison, either roast, or ground
Worcestershire sauce
Onion powder
Black pepper
Crushed red pepper
Salt
Minced garlic – you really want to use fresh minced garlic for this recipe for good, garlicky flavor.

As with most jerky, the most important ingredient is salt, for preserving, so substitutions can easily be made to suite your taste. Spices like garlic powder can be added to enhance the garlic flavor, and liquid smoke is always a good add!

Equipment needed for making bison jerky

Your basic needs for jerky making are a bowl for mixing, and a source of heat for dehydrating. This can be a dehydrator, which makes things faster, and easier, or your oven.

If you’re using your oven, you will set the heat to the lowest setting. Many ovens lowest heat setting is 185º which is hotter than idea for jerky. To get around this, and to aid with air flow, you will prop your oven open. This way hot air escapes with the moisture, and a little cool air gets in to help regulate the temperature. If you have a convection oven, that will help with airflow as well.

You can read here about making jerky in the oven.

Needless to say, a dehydrator makes drying jerky, or any other food, easy peasy, lemon squeezy. The trays are designed for maximum airflow to carry warm air over the food, and breeze the moisture away, while achieving the optimal temperature.

I have a basic Nesco dehydrator that I use most often, and my mother in law has an Excalibur dehydrator, which is objectively better quality, and easier to use. It has a price tag to match, but it absolutely worth it if you dehydrate a lot of food and don’t (like me) already have a Nesco.

That’s really all you need. I do recommend a dehydrator over drying in the oven if this is something you plan to do more than once or twice. We use ours to dry fruit, vegetables, sprouted grains, and herbs all year long, and it’s well worth having.

How to make Bison Jerky

If you are using a sliced roast, or other not ground meat, I suggest following our deer jerky marinade recipe for more detailed instructions. If you want to use this marinade, this works also! But you will probably need to make more marinade per pound of bison, since it will not all be mixed in the way it will with ground beef.

If you’re using ground, proceed as follows:

Combine all ingredients. Mix well. The general rule is one minute per pound of bison.
Cut two 18”x18” pieces of parchment paper
Form bison mixture into a ball, and place in the center of one piece of parchment.
Place second piece of parchment on top, and use a rolling pin, or your hands, to gently press bison to 3/8” thickness.
Remove top piece of parchment paper, and use a pizza cutter, or large knife to score jerky.
If using a knife, I recommend placing the knife on top of the jerky, and pressing down, rather than dragging the knife through the meat, as this will preserve the shape of the bison.
Use scissors if needed to cut jerky and parchment paper into smaller pieces that will fit into your dehydrator. If you you have a large dehydrator like an Excalibur, you may not need to cut it at all, but if you have a smaller one as shown in the pictures, you will need smaller sheets.
Set up dehydrator, and set to 160º degrees.
Dehydrate until completely dried through – this should take 4-6 hours, depending on your air flow.
When jerky is dry, use pizza cutter, scissors, or knife, to cut jerky strips along the score marks. If you scored deeply enough, the jerky make simply break a part with a little bending.
Store in an airtight container, such as a mason jar, or vacuum sealed bag.
For longer term storage, I recommend adding an oxygen absorber.

More Jerky recipes for you