Thanks in advance. I have a food dehydrator FYI.

Mine is super simple. Weigh the meat, and then add 2% of that weight in salt. For every pound of meat, add one teaspoon of black pepper. Lay it on racks and dry it. If you want more heat, add 1/4 teaspoon red pepper per pound of meat.

ATK/Cook's Illustrated/Cook's Country has a recipe that looks decent and doesn't require a dehydrator. they use top sirloin and (among other, more obvious ingredients) red miso paste in a 175 degree oven for about 4 hours.

Do you have a bbq pit? Any kind will do, if so

1. Buy the 6 inch tube smoker and a box of pellets, try hickory, mequite or oak from here or wherever you can find it, lots of stores sell them, even Home Depot and Lowes A Maze N Smoker Amazon Store
2. Buy some milanesa (mexican meat market, walmart, HEB, lots of places sell it), pick the leanest one you can find and buy some Bolner Fajita seasoning like this Fiesta Fajita Seasoning
3. partially stuff the tube smoker with foil because you only need to smoke for about 10-15 min depending on the wood you pick and your taste for how much smoke flavor you want so you don't need to fill the whole thing up and waste pellets, fill the remaining gap in the tube smoke with your choice of wood pellet, place in bottom of BBQ pit below the grate and let it burn for a few minutes
4. While it is burning, cut the milanesa across the grain as best you can in chunks of whatever size you chose, and season liberally with the fajita seasoning, then go place on the grate of your BBQ pit above the tube smoker for 10-15 min, play around with this until you get the flavor you like
5. After 10-15 of smoking take it off the BBQ pit and put it in your dehydrator. I use an Excalibur and follow the temperature setting and time for jerky, I can't remember what is it is right now, and let it dehydrate
6. Check it throughout the cycle you set it for after a few hours, I seem to recall maybe about 3 hrs, but I could be wrong.

edit to add note; on the fajita make sure you pick the one that contains salt, because they do sell a salt-free one.

That is it, pretty simple, very good tasting jerky.

Decay said:

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I can tell you from experience that the Alton Brown "put it in the folds of a paper air filter and strap it to a box fan" method is a mixed bag.

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Never tried that drying method, but his recipe is lights out! Works great with a dehydrator.

I'm severely allergic to the pink salt/Prague powder (sodium nitrite).

Any good recipes that DON'T use the cure salt?

This. You can use cure as an additional layer of protection. It's good to use if it's going to make more than a week to dry if you're making a thicker cut jerky. But for thin cut jerky, it's not needed.

I've wanted to try my hand at curing my own bacon as well, but this one really seems more dependent on curing salt.
anyone have a recommendation on a good and not too bulky dehydrator for under $300?

I don't know the first thing about making bacon but I thought it was smoked and no need for a dehydrator for that. For dehydrators, Exaclibur dehydrators are very well regarded, they have several modules. I am sure they have a sub $300 model

https://excaliburdehydrator.com/

For some reason I can't get the link to work but that is the website.

You're right about the actual process with bacon. I should've clarified that my dehydrator question was more for the beef jerky topic.

normalhorn said:

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I'm severely allergic to the pink salt/Prague powder (sodium nitrite).

Any good recipes that DON'T use the cure salt?

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Warm smoke it instead of curing and cold smoke.

The texture will be different without pink salt.