Category Archives: Jerky

Duke’s Meats

I found Duke’s Meats at a food show/convention and I was blown away by the flavor and quality of these beef snacks.

These are their “shorty sausages,” and they may look like standard jerky sticks but they’re 1000x better. No oily, waxy, greasy, skin-wrapped feel. No overly salted taste. No over the top spices to mask the terrible quality of the meat inside. This is all delicious!

The original has a mild spice to it, and the hatch green chili has a slight kick of bright, fresh green that will wake up your taste buds and have you craving more. I highly recommend these babies. In fact I think I’ll be getting some more very soon.

Think Jerky

I came across Think Jerky at a food convention. They sent me a package of five flavors to sample. Sriracha Honey (turkey), Ginger Orange (beef), Sweet Chipotle (beef), Thanksgiving (turkey) and Classic (beef).

I was really impressed with the texture and quality of the meat in these babies. Very tender.

Sriracha Honey tastes exactly how it sounds – a punch of heat, tempered back by some sweet. Very nice. It’s no wonder that is their best seller.

My favorite, though, was the ginger orange. It was such a nice divergence from common jerky flavors. A slight hint of citrus and the bright bite of ginger – I really loved it.

Another uncommon jerky was the Thanksgiving pack. And yes, it’s turkey jerky. You really get a full helping of those classic Thanksgiving herbs and flavors like thyme, sage and garlic. Lots of times turkey jerky doesn’t actually TASTE like turkey. It just tastes like “substance.” But Think Jerky’s turkey jerky actually tastes like poultry. It’s really nice.

I highly recommend this stuff.

Say It With Beef

My wife got me these jerky roses by Say It With Beef for Valentine’s Day, and I couldn’t be more impressed with the quality and flavor.

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So cool! There were three flavors: original, peppered and teriyaki. My favorite was the peppered, but they were all great. The stem of the rose is edible too. They have a dry but not hard consistency. Good beefy and savory flavor through and through, and they come with a nice pint glass instead of a vase.

I highly recommend these for any meat lover.

Buffalo Bob’s Jerky

Buffalo Bob’s makes a shitload of unique game meat and exotic meat jerky sticks. Some are long, round and dowel-shaped, like Slim Jim, while others are long, flat and rectangular strips.

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Most of the exotic and game meats also have beef mixed in with the other proteins, so the variety isn’t really as diverse as it seems on first glance. I received this set as part of a Christmas gift, and it included two of each flavor (one flat and one round each): kangaroo, elk, wild boar, ostrich, gator, buffalo, venison and duck.

The texture and flavor is better than something like Slim Jim (less waxy and oily, and easier to bite and chew), but not quite on par with the more artisan jerky brands I’ve reviewed in the past. These are good for on-the-go, single serving bang-outs, whereas the bags are meant to last a few snack sessions. Also there is a vast price difference. Some of those jerky bags can run you about $8 a pop. These are more affordable.

Chef’s Cut Jerky

I recently got to sample a bunch of different jerky flavors from Chef’s Cut at The Great Big Bacon Picnic in Brooklyn. While the samples they were serving were mainly uncured bacon (in the spirit of the festival), I did try three flavors of said protein, so I figured that was enough for a full product review.

Sriracha is by far the best of the three bacon flavors.

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It was spicy but mellowed out by the natural sweetness of bacon. Really the perfect savory snack if you ask me. Get a bag ASAP, or a gross of boxes stacked high on a warehouse skid of bags. Hope you can drive a forklift…

We also tried maple and applewood. I preferred the maple, but the crew I was with liked the applewood. Either way you win, though, because it’s all fucking bacon.

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As you might expect, this company also makes regular beef jerky, chicken jerky and turkey jerky in various other unique flavors. One that looked nice to me was the buffalo chicken jerky. I’ll  have to try that fucker next.

Brandt Beef Jerky

Brandt offers some excellent beef jerky. The texture is tender, and the orange teriyaki was my favorite of their flavors, with “Volcanic Jalapeno” coming in a close second.

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BBQ and volcanic:

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Orange and cracked pepper:

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As you can see, the orange is a bit more “wet” looking than the dry cracked pepper, BBQ and volcanic jalapeno.

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This is some of the better jerky in my repertoire. I definitely recommend it if you come across this stuff.

Jack Link’s Jerky

I finally got around to trying Jack Link’s jerky. It’s amazing I hadn’t caved to their awesome Sasquatch marketing campaign sooner, because I really liked those commercials.

Don’t ever fuck with a cryptozoid… Anyway, I picked up a bag of sweet and hot.

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The texture is tender, and the beef doesn’t seem to get stuck in your teeth when chewing. The flavor is spot on spicy and sweet. A really fine commercial brand jerky. I’ll definitely be picking up more flavors.

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Field Trip Jerky

My wife and I came across this jerky at the Columbus Circle Holiday Market the other day.

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We sampled a few flavors and picked out our top three for purchase; they were offering three bags for $20. This seems to be pretty average pricing for jerky, which is expensive in general (especially for the good shit).

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So we picked up cracked pepper turkey jerky, which is nice and tender, really flavorful and addicting. Probably our favorite.

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The second was this crushed chili flake turkey jerky, which had a good spice level to it and also very tender.

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Last was the spiced honey beef, which was sweet with a hint of spice at the end.

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All very good. I recommend this if you see it. Grab a pack! The cracked pepper turkey is my favorite of the three.

Krave Jerky

My buddy picked up a pair of jerky bags and shared them with me. Once again I preferred the turkey jerky to the beef in this taste lineup of lemon garlic turkey vs pineapple orange beef.

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Both the texture and the flavor of the turkey variety seemed better to me, though the beef was indeed tender.

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I thought I’d like the pineapple orange beef more. Perhaps it needed a spicy element. The lemon garlic turkey had a kick from the cracked black pepper that was on it.

Some more flavors I picked up:

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Here we go: first up is chili lime beef. This was pretty good. It is somewhat similar to the chili garlic, but a bit brighter from the citrus. Definitely liked the spice level and the texture was soft and tender.

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Next up was basil citrus turkey. Once again I find that i like the non-beef meats better in jerky form for some reason. No idea why that is, but this flavor was spot on: you get that great herby basil flavor and the brightness of citrus in each bite.

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Next was lemon garlic turkey, which I already reviewed above.

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Then came this black cherry barbecue pork jerky. I had high hopes of this one but it fell flat on flavor. I’m hoping that it was just an errant piece that didn’t absorb a lot of flavor for whatever reason. I will report back if the remainder of the bag is better.

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Continuing through the color wheel was this red bag of chili garlic beef jerky. This was distantly similar to the asian style dry jerky products that I know and love so much. Big winner here. And the pieces of tender beef are really large, so that’s good too.

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Grilled sweet teriyaki pork was very nice, and a great texture. A worthy selection in the jerky game.

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Last was this sweet chipotle beef. Here, the pieces were even BIGGER than the chili garlic slabs. This had a nice mild flavor that will please any jerky connoisseur.

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Primal Jerky

We have turkey and grass-fed beef here. Both were a little tough and hard, but the turkey was the more flavorful product of the two. Beef is on the left, and turkey is on the right:

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Some of the others I’ve sampled here and reviewed for the site are much better. Softer, more flavorful, easier to chew, etc. I’d pass on this one in the future.