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As any meat-lover will readily agree to, one of the most unsettling things about the 21st century is the fact that a few ounces of beef jerky—easily the greatest foodstuff of all time—can cost as much as six or seven dollars. If you're like us, that just won't do.

Instead, using a method adapted from the great jerky enthusiast Alton Brown, we'll walk you through how to create pounds of stunningly good beef jerky at a mere fraction of the market price. You'll need only some beef, a few marinating ingredients, a box fan, and a couple of cellulose air-filters that you can buy at any hardware store.

Before we start: You should know that beef jerky is not only absurdly easy to make, but it's also one of the few ways to prepare uncooked meat that's safe to eat. Like smoking or salting, letting thin strips dry out actually preserves and sterilizes meat. The reason is simple: Most meat-eating microbes need water, and making jerky involves little more than removing all the moisture from beef. Properly prepared and stored, uncooked beef jerky will stay preserved for years.

Depending on what cut of meat you use, your jerky can vary dramatically in flavor. You're going to want to pick a very lean cut of beef (resist the knee-jerk reaction to find a well marbled hunk of meat) that can be cut in thin strips along the grain. Here, I'm using 4.5 lbs of top-round steak. I'd suggest that, or eye-of-round steak. Both work great.