I have always loved jerky. My bank account, on the other hand, has not. Let’s be honest, the bloody stuff is expensive. Then there is the fact that what they call “Jerky” now days bears little resemblance to what I grew up believing jerky to be & the changes are not improvements. Read more . So, of course the answer is “make your own”. The first step is to get a dehydrator. You will find that these are expensive or useless; or both. So, of course the answer is “make your own”. A bunch of years ago, I lived in Kailua, on the windward side of the island of Oahu. Every Saturday my lady & I would hit the garage sales. We’d get the paper and lay out a rout from Sale to sale, with a minimum of backtracking, jump on our bikes and explore Kailua. It was fun & a great excuse to get some much needed exercise. If we bought something too big for the bikes we’d just go back & pick it up later. Talk about a 1000 days of summer. I bought a homemade dehydrator one Saturday. Didn’t have a clue what I was going to do with it but it was well made, in good condition & cheap. I wound up jerking beef, venison & fish. I didn’t bring that to Samoa with me so I had to make one here. I was building a resort out in Manono and had a crew of skilled guys so I just drew some crude plans and they knocked one up out of some scrap plywood. That one finally succumbed to hard use and neglect and I wasn’t in the building business any longer. I wanted something simple, easy to make & cheap. His post is really complete, with lots of pictures & such like. If you need really detailed instruction & lots of pics, you might want to visit his post at www. traditionaltx. us/images/JerkyDrierInstructions. pdf If you really get serious about making a lot of jerky you’ll probably want to put together something a little more substantial but this is a great way to try out the jerky thing; without a huge investment.