diff --git a/test/README.md b/test/README.md
index c1208d60b..60d43922d 100644
--- a/test/README.md
+++ b/test/README.md
@@ -20,7 +20,6 @@ running on Mac OS X, most of these are available with `brew`:
 * [Bats](https://github.com/sstephenson/bats)
 
 * [AWS cli](http://aws.amazon.com/cli/)
-* [jq](http://stedolan.github.io/jq/)
 
 ## Configuring Tests
 
diff --git a/test/test_helper.bash b/test/test_helper.bash
index bb6466ac8..647a5b757 100644
--- a/test/test_helper.bash
+++ b/test/test_helper.bash
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 # Let's verify that the tools we need are installed
-declare -a required=(aws jq)
+declare -a required=(aws)
 for cmd in "${required[@]}"; do
     command -v $cmd >/dev/null 2>&1 || {
         echo "'$cmd' must be installed" >&2
@@ -40,8 +40,8 @@ fixtures() {
 # This deletes any AMIs with a tag "packer-test" of "true"
 aws_ami_cleanup() {
     local region=${1:-us-east-1}
-    aws ec2 describe-images --region ${region} --owners self --output json \
+    aws ec2 describe-images --region ${region} --owners self --output text \
         --filters 'Name=tag:packer-test,Values=true' \
-        | jq -r -M '.Images[]["ImageId"]' \
+        --query 'Images[*].ImageId' \
         | xargs -n1 aws ec2 deregister-image --region ${region} --image-id
 }