To make beef jerky in bulk, write the marinade as percentages of the meat, slice every piece the same thickness, fill racks by weight, and run full smokehouse loads. Most of what goes in comes out as water: 100 pounds of marinated beef dries to about 40, so every bag is costed from the dried weight, not the raw. Done this way, a jerky maker that made 5 pounds at a time in an oven makes 100 in a day, and the cost of a 3-ounce bag falls from $7.71 to $3.82. Jerky made to sell comes from an inspected kitchen with a HACCP plan, and the bulk steps follow that plan. Below is the recipe at three sizes, the steps, the drying loss, what a bag costs at each size, and a free scaling calculator.
The short version
- Write the marinade as percentages of the meat, so it scales with the beef.
- Slice partly frozen beef to one even thickness.
- Fill racks by weight and run full loads.
- Heat to the plan's critical limit before drying.
- About 60% of the weight dries off: cost the dried ounce.
- Jerky to sell is made under inspection, with a HACCP plan.
- TaroStack keeps the recipe by weight, takes each batch's ingredients off stock and checks its yield. More below.
The recipe, by percentage
Cedar Hollow Jerky, the made-up jerky maker in Bozeman, Montana, I use in these examples, started with 5 pounds in a home oven and now runs a smokehouse in a shared inspected kitchen. Its original recipe, weighed:
| Ingredient | % of the mix | Kitchen batch, 5 lb | One batch, 50 lb | The run, 100 lb | Cost a lb, bought in bulk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beef eye of round, trimmed | 92% | 4.60 lb | 46.0 lb | 92.0 lb | $5.50 |
| Soy sauce | 5% | 0.25 lb | 2.50 lb | 5.00 lb | $1.20 |
| Worcestershire sauce | 1.5% | 0.07 lb | 0.75 lb | 1.50 lb | $2.00 |
| Brown sugar | 1% | 0.05 lb | 0.50 lb | 1.00 lb | $0.85 |
| Black pepper, coarse | 0.2% | 0.01 lb | 0.10 lb | 0.20 lb | $6.00 |
| Garlic powder | 0.1% | 0.01 lb | 0.07 lb | 0.15 lb | $5.00 |
| Onion powder | 0.1% | 0.01 lb | 0.07 lb | 0.15 lb | $4.00 |
| The whole mix | 100% | 5 lb | 50 lb | 100 lb |
The 100 pounds cost $518.40, nearly all of it beef. The marinade is under a tenth of the weight, so a pound of beef always gets the same marinade, whether the run is 5 pounds or 500. Pricing the dried ounce is in how to price homemade jerky.
The steps, at 100 pounds
- Slice partly frozen. Beef firmed in the freezer slices evenly on a slicer at a quarter inch, against the grain; uneven slices dry unevenly.
- Marinate by weight, cold. Weigh the beef, weigh the marinade at its percentage, and marinate in food-grade tubs in the cooler overnight.
- Rack by weight. About 4 pounds of raw strips to a rack, no overlaps. Twenty-five racks make the run.
- Heat, then dry. Each load is heated to the critical limit in the kitchen's HACCP plan, 160°F in the example, checked with probes, and then dried to the water activity the plan sets. The plan is in jerky HACCP plan.
- Weigh what comes out. Over three runs, the marinated beef loses about 60% of its weight; record each run's.
- Bag with a lot code. Each 3-ounce bag sealed with an oxygen absorber and labeled with the run's lot and date.
The run takes one person about 10 hours of hands-on work over two days, slicing and marinating one day, racking, drying and bagging the next.
What a bag costs at each size
| Per bag | Kitchen batch, 5 lb | Bulk run, 100 lb |
|---|---|---|
| Ingredients | $3.36 (grocery prices) | $2.43 (bought in bulk) |
| Packaging | $0.60 | $0.45 |
| Labor at $20 an hour | $3.75 (11.25 min a bag) | $0.94 (2.8 min a bag) |
| Cost of a bag | $7.71 | $3.82 |
The beef is most of the cost at either size; buying it by the case cuts it by a quarter. The labor falls the most, from 11.25 minutes a bag to 2.8, because a slicer and a smokehouse take about the same minutes for 50 pounds as a knife and an oven do for 5. Every bag carries 7.5 ounces of raw meat and marinade, so a run that dries 2% further makes fewer bags.
Making it to sell
Jerky is a meat product, so jerky for sale comes from a USDA-inspected or state-inspected establishment, your own or a processor's, working under a HACCP plan; selling it from a home kitchen isn't allowed, in can you sell jerky from home. The bulk run is where the plan's records pile up: each load's temperatures, each run's drying and the lots of beef behind it.
Get the calculator
Download the jerky scaling calculator. Two sheets: scale the recipe, where you type each ingredient's percentage and cost a pound and the raw mix you want, and each ingredient's weight for the run fills in, with the racks, smokehouse loads, what comes out after the drying loss, the bags it fills and the cost of each bag; and weigh the loss, where what went in and came out over a few batches gives your average drying loss. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
Two recipes, a run every week, beef from two suppliers, and a case of eye of round that came in warm. A sheet can say how much marinade a run needs, but not which beef went into which run, or whether the drying loss has crept from 60% to 63% since the new smokehouse.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack keeps the recipe by weight, takes each batch's ingredients off stock and checks its yield.
The recipe in the units you use. A recipe holds each ingredient by weight, with beef bought by the case and used by the pound, and the cost of every bag comes from what you paid. "What could I make right now" says how many runs the beef and soy sauce on the shelf allow.
Each run a batch. A run takes its ingredients off stock, records the lots of beef it used, and gets a lot of its own for the bags, with how much came out good, how much was rejected and the labor minutes.
Yield checked from history. From your own batch history, TaroStack says whether a recipe yields what it claims and which ingredient's quantity is off, so a drying loss that creeps up shows in the numbers. A case of beef rejected at receiving is an adjustment with its reason, spoiled, and shows in the waste report.
| The job | Spreadsheet | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Ingredients for Tuesday's run | Multiply, then check the shelf | What could I make right now |
| Which case of beef went into a run | Not written down | Lots recorded on the batch |
| The real drying loss | Weighed now and then | Good and rejected on every batch |
| Beef rejected at receiving | Thrown out, forgotten | Adjustment with a reason |
Recipes, batches, lots and yield are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.