A Bedtime Snack

3 Fun Ways To Cook With Beef Jerky

12 May 2015 by Zoey Howell

Beef jerky, like from Gio's Jerky, is a popular snack for many people. Beef jerky can also be surprisingly healthy. As long as you're careful about choosing lower sodium offerings, beef jerky can actually be a good source of lean protein, which isn't a bad quality for a snack to have. If you're tired of snacking on strips of beef jerky, though, there are several other ways you can incorporate it into your diet. It turns out that beef jerky works not only as a stand-alone snack, but also as in ingredient in a number of different dishes. Check out a few ways you can use beef jerky to make amazing, flavorful dishes.

Beef Jerky As A Topping

One easy way to add beef jerky to your recipes is to use it as a topping or condiment in much the same way you would use bacon bits. Chop some jerky up into small pieces and add it to your baked or scalloped potatoes, your salads, and your macaroni and cheese.

Want to give your breakfast a whole new taste? Add crumbled pieces of beef jerky to your eggs or add it to your biscuit gravy in place of sausage or bacon. Have a picky eater in the house? Sprinkle a few spoonfuls of crumbled jerky over a bowl of green beans or a dish of broccoli and watch those vegetables suddenly become much more appealing. Try leaving a bowl of finely chopped beef jerky on the table with a spoon, and let everyone experiment with adding the topping to whichever foods they like – you may be surprised by the new flavor combinations you can come up with.

Beef Jerky Chili

If you're a chili aficionado, you know some of the best chili recipes involve substituting other meats for basic ground beef, or adding other meats in in addition to the ground beef. Beef jerky chili is a good example of what can happen when you add another flavorful meat along with the ground beef.

One recipe for beef jerky chili calls for three pounds of ground beef and a pound of shredded beef jerky, along with black beans, onions, bell and chipotle peppers, garlic, and other ingredients. The jerky adds texture and complexity to the chili and gives the dish a hint of sweetness to balance out the hot peppers and spices. If you want to change things up, choose teriyaki or peppered jerky and see how the substitution changes the flavor.

Beef Jerky Tomato Sauce

Even celebrity chefs know the value of beef jerky as an ingredient. That's why Alton Brown of Food Network has a recipe for beef jerky tomato sauce. While it may sound strange at first, putting this sauce over pasta may have you looking at spaghetti in a whole new way. Even better, it's a fairly simple recipe. Even if you don't think of yourself as an innovative cook, you can probably handle making tomato sauce with beef jerky.

Simply cut up three or four ounces of beef jerky and put it into a pot of boiling water. Then saute onions, bell pepper, and garlic in a separate saute pan, and add some kosher salt for flavor. Once the onions are translucent and the garlic has been sauteed for a few minutes, you can add the jerky and water to the saute pan, along with some canned chopped tomatoes, some parsley, and heavy cream. Heat the mixture until it reaches your desired thickness, and then it will be ready to serve over pasta. Or, if you're feeling creative, try it over toast or rice.

If you liked beef jerky as a snack, you'll love it now that you have a whole new way to enjoy its flavor. Give one or more of these beef jerky cooking suggestions a try. You may never want to go back to cooking without it. 

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