To develope Hanbang beef jerky as health food, six kinds of beef jerky were prepared by adding sugar (A), licorice (B) and three kinds of spice extracts (clove: C, fennel fruit: D and Chungyang green pepper extract: E) and mixture of all extracts (F). The effects of the drying method and added spice extracts on the quality characteristics of the beef jerky were evaluated. In general, the air-blast dried beef jerky contained $31{sim}33%$ moisture, $50.0{sim}51.2%$ crude protein, $7.2{sim}7.8%$ crude lipid and $3.0{sim}3.3%$ crude ash. For the mineral content of the air-blast dried jerky, the most prevalent mineral was Na $(1540.08{sim}1838.17$ mg%), followed by K, P, Mg, and Ca. The Ca content of the beef jerky was highest in the mixed extract group (88.53 mg%), and the lowest content was in sugar-added group (53.12 mg%). For the color properties, the L-value (lightness), a-value (redness) and b-value (yellowness) were higher in the air-blast dried beef jerky than in the hot air dried samples. The drying methods showed their greatest affect on the redness (a) for all six jerkies (p<0.001). For the preference by sensory evaluation, the beef jerky samples with added sugar (A) and licorice extract (B) had significantly higher scores than the beef jerky samples with the added spice extracts, for both of air-blast drying and hot air drying (p<0.05). Preference for the air-blast dried beef jerkies with added clove (C) and fennel fruits (D) were significantly higher, in terms of taste, color, softness and aftertaste as compared to the respective hot air dried jerkies (p<0.01). Considering all the obtained results, we concluded that licorice and spice extracts can be used as natural preservatives in the development of health foods and the air-blast drying method is recommended to improve the quality characteristics of beef jerky.