Can you freeze homemade beef jerky?

Answer 1

Sure you can, but why would you? If you are spending the money for some high end beef, why lessen the quality by freezing it? Despite the fact that most meat companies that ship dry-aged beef freeze their product, freezing does damage the cell structure resulting in additional moisture loss. Faster freezing minimizes the ice crystal size, but still has an adverse effect on the cell walls.

I would rather see you buy locally some fresh beef that has been dry-aged or even better (and much cheaper) do it yourself at home a week or two before you plan to use it. A commercial dry-aging facility is basically a big refrigerator so despite what you may read about dry-aging at home being complicated or even unsafe, it's the same principal as the commercial plants only on a smaller scale. You can find numerous websites on-line that explain how to do it but basically it amounts to letting the meat sit in your fridge for a week or two. It's not rocket science, just natural enzymes doing their job of breaking down the meat proteins.

If you purchase a cut of beef to dry-age, keep in mind that the vacuum packed rib roast the grocery store sells you probably has about a week of wet-aging on it by the time you get it. So another week of dry-aging will be close to optimum, although you can still age it much longer but the law of diminishing returns begin and you get little increase in tenderness while continuing to lose moisture and surface drying (shrinkage).

Answer 2

yes