Frequently Asked Questions

Beef Jerky is a popular meat snack enjoyed worldwide. Beef Jerky is sliced beef seasoned in a mixture of spices and seasonings. The seasoned beef is then dried slowly in a dehydrator using heat and air.

This is the perfect snack. Low processed, super tasty and safe to eat.

Beef jerky is a nutritious meat snack food that's enjoyed all over the world because of its great taste, massive protein content, long shelf life and being a low processed natural food. It originated thousands of years ago from drying meat with fire and smoke in order to preserve it for future eating.

The combination of heat and smoke from the fire added a distinct flavour that people still enjoy to this day.

It is typically brown and can be tough to chew. The taste can be strong as the drying process concentrates spices inside the beef.

There are many flavours and styles available for purchase.

Dry beef jerky has a very high protein content - close to 50% of the total weight.

It's a great high-protein snack that is as low processed as you can get. It's perfect with a cold drink at the end of the day. To bring to work for smoko. Or even after a hard training session to provide your muscles with protein for recovery!

The best beef jerky Australia is made with lean beef (trimmed of all the fat) cut into thin strips, marinaded or spiced with any number of flavourings.

You can use many different cuts of beef but the best for making jerky is something lean and free from connective tissue. Two good examples are Topside and Outside flats. These 2 cuts generally don't have much fat running through them and are cost effective. When traditionally prepared, the best beef jerky is a low processed food.

Beef jerky in Australia can be mainly found in pubs and brewers, supermarkets, servo's and supermarkets. Most brands will have an online shop where you can buy direct from them. *cough* originalbeefchief.com

Chock full of nutritious calories beef jerky is a snack you can enjoy anytime you feel like snacking in search of a quick energy pick me up. It's great on the go, and perfect around exercise.  For reference it contains 58g protein per 100g (that's 3 times more than chicken or tuna!) 

Fishing, camping, hiking, hunting, weight training, hard exercising, rock climbing. Whatever you need to conquer beef jerky is a great nutritious snack to have handy.

Those are great but here are some more top spots to eat beef jerky:

• Stuck in traffic on the way home
• After the gym to repair those muscles

• Stashed in your desk at work

• Long road trips

• Weekends at the footy or cricket

• In the shed while your working on the old project

• Hidden at the back of the pantry for those late night snacks - Beats chips and chocolate!

Don’t forget behind the bar in the man-cave!

Beef jerky is made with lean beef. Lean beef is quite healthy in moderate servings and good quality jerky is very low processed. It is literally beef dried with heat and air. The marinades used for flavour can contain sugars, sodium and common allergens like soy. Please always check for any allergens if you are at risk.

Beef jerky is a unique food. Drying and heat are two natural preservatives of meat, so you can take beef jerky anywhere with you and have a high nutrition, protein packed, red meat snack. Compared to a protein bar or trail mix beef ,jerky has a much higher protein to carbohydrates/fat ratio.

For example; 100g Ragin Cajun beef jerky consists of:

313 calories, 7.5 fat, 4g carbs, 56g PROTEIN

The best bits about beef jerky can be summed up by:

• High protein - 56g per 100g. That's 56%

• Long shelf life - Lasts over 12 months!

• Great taste - Especially Beef Chief Jerky

The calories contained in beef jerky vary by size and what seasonings are used.

A typical 50g packet of Beef Chief jerky contains 160-200 calories. This is made up of at least 28g protein, 4g carbohydrates and 7g fat. These values vary slightly depending on the flavour. The beef has natural protein and fat content that is concentrated during the drying process. Beef Chief has zero carb options available too.

You can freeze jerky for long term storage if you want. However, beef jerky has a shelf life 12+ months when stored in a cool dry location such as the pantry. However, the most common time to use a freezer during the process of making jerky is to semi freeze the raw beef before slicing. This ensures consistent thickness each slice.

Gluten is a protein found in certain foods. There is no gluten in beef and beef jerky doesn’t naturally contain any gluten. But it can become present in jerky in the form of marinades, the base sauce used to flavour the meat. 

Common jerky ingredients like soy sauce, sweet soy sauce, and BBQ sauce contain gluten. Some of Beef Chief jerky contains gluten. Some don’t. 

If you are gluten intolerant please check the warnings on each flavour before consuming.

Beef Chief jerky sells beef jerky in bulk. We are happy to sell you as much as you like. Say you're going camping and everyone is putting in for jerky. You end up wanting 6kg all mixed up to your individual orders. We can cater for you. There's many occasions you'd want more than a kilo of your favourite jerky and we will always do our best to look after you.

You should have a really good idea about beef jerky after reading that. But if your still curious about anything, you can shoot The Chief a message and ask away. Thanks for taking the time to read it all and I hope you learned something about a great little snack.

 While we try to get orders out the door as fast as possible that can't always happen. Express postage refers to the time in transit - how long the product is in the hands of Australia Post, not to how quick the order makes it out the door. If urgency in shipping times is a factor please refer to our shipping time guide found HERE.

 These timeframes are an estimate based on Australia Post's guidelines and may differ slightly in real life. We have all dealt with AusPost before so just keep that in mind.

The WORD jerky comes from a Spanish-American word for burned meat "Ch'arki", a name derived from the Quechuan language of the Incas (which literally translates into "dried meat").

However, drying meat and fruit is one of the oldest methods of preservation known to humankind. No one knows the true origins of dried meat (jerky/biltong) but we have evidence that it was being produced en masse thousands of years ago in ancient Egypt and we can assume it was around long before then.

Traditionally salt and smoke was used to preserve meat - This left it very salty, but contained protein and nutrients that were now able to be preserved for later consumption, helping people survive in times of need. Over many years, various cultures have added spices to the mix to make it taste even better and that's exactly what beef jerky is today.

Traditionally hung in the sun or smoked over the fire, these days dehydrators do the job with a higher degree of control and hygiene than older methods.

It could be thought of as one of the most human and natural food experiences. Something we can truly share with our ancestors.

Bacteria and pathogens that can make you sick survive in water. Too salty and they die. Too little water and they dry up and die. Beef jerky is safe because it is dried past the point for pathogenic bacteria (the nasty ones) to survive on the meat. On top of that, beef jerky is heated as it dries and this helps to kill all bacteria that might be present on raw meat.

So yes, you can be sure that beef jerky made by a licensed supplier is safe to eat.

How is beef jerky made?

It begins by marinating beef jerky. You need to slice your beef into steaks and marinate them in sauces and rubs. The longer the meat marinates the better the flavour penetration. Aim for overnight at a minimum.

You then need a beef jerky dehydrator.

Dehydrating beef jerky works by laying strips of jerky on the dehydrator racks. When in operation the hot air blows over the top of the beef and evaporates all the moisture of the beef. This dries out all surfaces of the meat evenly. When it's on the drying racks, you wont hear it sizzle. In fact, jerky is dried at around 70 degrees. Each brand has their own style regarding temperature and duration and this is reflected in the end product.

It stays on these racks until the desired texture or consistency is reached. Beef jerky must be dried to around 50% of its original weight to be safe enough to eat. Typically, harder jerky will be dried to 35-40% of its original weight. This means that it can take up to 3kg of raw beef to produce 1kg beef jerky.

Drying times can vary wildy. Some batches will take 8 hours. Some can take up to 18 hours and depends on factors like meat thickness, marinade consistency, drying temperature and even the weather conditions!

At Beef Chief our jerky is well dried jerky - it's not moist. The best Australian beef jerky tears apart nicely and you can feel all the muscle fibres rip apart between your teeth. If you've opened a bag at the pub and it's soft, almost like a candied beef or wet leather, what you are getting is a higher moisture content beef jerky.

At Beef Chief, we dry our thick cut jerky till it's hard enough that you can tear pieces apart and see the individual muscle fibres spider-webbing. Our jerky takes more time to chew, it's more effort to work your teeth into, but your effort is rewarded with a long lasting flavour. While chewing and working saliva into the meat you're extracting the marinade and all those juicy flavours from the beef.

This is something that sets Beef Chief jerky apart. Our flavour gets better the more you chew, and lasts longer than other jerky brands! You might get a sore jaw, but you WONT run out of flavour.

If you've tried a few different brands of jerky you would have noticed they all vary in texture.

Some beef jerky is softer and easy to chew. This style of jerky is not dried as long and has a higher water content. This soft jerky can be eaten quickly. Sometimes you might notice the jerky is almost see through. This means it has been made with a meat paste and not meat strips. This meat paste is usually cheap ground beef and the fatty offcuts, mixed with spices and preservatives. This paste is processed and pressed into uniform strips to dry. This is a cheap beef jerky.

Tough jerky is more traditional and will take longer to chew. This is generally what people think of when talking about beef jerky. Made with strips of beef that have been marinated and laid out to dry. This is the type of beef jerky to buy if you want something that you can chew on for a while.

Tough beef jerky often uses less preservatives than soft jerky because the extra water removal stops bacteria from taking up residence. 

A question I get asked a lot by new customers is: "Why is jerky so expensive?"

There's not just one factor in the cost of beef jerky.

1. Quality of the beef: A great quality jerky starts with a premium quality beef. If it's cheap jerky, it's likely a low grade meat (or sometimes a meat paste). If you're buying a cheap jerky vs premium Aussie craft beef jerky the quality of the beef is instantly recognizable.

2. It takes 3kg of raw beef to make 1kg of beef jerky. You lose 2/3 of what you start with due to water loss during dehydration. So you need a lot of

Around Australia you'll find beef jerky associated a handful of activities:

• While having a drink - Have a squiz next time you're at the local and chances are you'll notice bags of beef jerky behind the counter. It's no coincidence. Beef jerky and beer are a combo always destined for each other.

Traditionally preserved with salt, after a good chew you'd be reaching for a cold one. These days not all beef jerky is salty as preservation methods have become better understood and as tastes have developed over the years. If you like it really salty then try Gunpowder, but most of our flavours have low salt taste, like my smooth Smokey BBQ.

• Getting Outdoors: On the Motorbike. Mountain biking. Rock climbing. Hunting. Camping. Boating. Fishing.

One big reason beef jerky is a massive hit with the fitness crowd is because its high protein per weight content. It's easy to take everywhere and it takes up less space and contains more protein then other perishable foods. You can eat some and reseal the bag and the jerky WONT spoil. You can leave it open and it wont go stale. It's perfect to keep with you and eat anywhere.

Anyone engaging in activities where protein, weight and space is a consideration will instantly see the benefits of a high quality beef jerky.

• Weight lifting - Beef jerky is great for all sorts of athletes. High volume training, resistance training, bodybuilders, powerlifters, everyday gym buff. Why? When training hard and heavy, protein requirements become of paramount importance and daily requirements can be massive for some people.

It can be difficult to eat enough protein without feeling bloated and stuffed. Cooked chicken breast. Containers full of ground beef. Piles of tuna cans stacking up on the bench. Beef jerky is exactly the same as the beef you could be eating every day. But the beauty is that, through dehydration, jerky basically shrinks the size of your steak. A 300g steak is shrunk down to a 100g bag of Beef Chief jerky, and you can eat that throughout the entire day. At work, pre workout, post workout, late night snack (no more junk food cravings!) you can be hitting those macro goals easily with a low processed natural food. 

Compare it to other high protein foods like fish, chicken or raw beef per 100g.

Protein per          50g.     Protein per 100g

Beef Jerky.              29g.             58g

Chicken Breast    10.5g              21g

Raw Beef                  10g             20g

Tuna                       9.75g           19.5g

And you don’t need to microwave it – No stinking out the room.

• Perfect snack on the go - Feeling fatigued and shaky after another flat out day? Eat some jerky and get good protein calories into your head. Keep some in your glovebox and next time you're starving on the way home from work in traffic, you'll thank me. Or you're hungry but haven’t got time to stop cause you've got a whole afternoon of errands to run.

Beef Chief jerky has resealable bags so you can have some now and some later. Hook into a bag of Beef Chief and you'll feel better than snacking on junk.

It depends.

If your order has not yet been fulfilled we are able to credit you back the difference.

If your order has left the building then no. Your discount code will be valid on your next order though. 

If you have purchased wanting to use a code for merchandise, free packs or giveaways then we will be able to help, providing you have proof the code was gained legitimately.