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.
BBQ and volcanic:
Orange and cracked pepper:
As you can see, the orange is a bit more “wet” looking than the dry cracked pepper, BBQ and volcanic jalapeno.
This is some of the better jerky in my repertoire. I definitely recommend it if you come across this stuff.
True Made Foods makes some awesome sauces and ketchup. The sauces are naturally sweetened by using other vegetables in the process instead of added sugars. This brilliant idea was conceived by one of the co-founders who was attempting to hide healthy foods in her husband’s meals. He loved it so much that he launched the ketchup product with an entrepreneur friend.
As you can see below in the next pic, each bottle contains spinach, squash and carrots in the mix. Not only does this add natural sweetness, but it also helps create a nice thick texture that eats with significant substance for a sauce.
The ketchup is absolutely delicious, as a result. No longer is your ketchup merely a condiment for your hot dog or burger. It becomes a topping, just as important as your onions or cheese: That’s what I mean to convey when I say that it has substance to it.
The Veracha is a thick, chili paste type of sauce that’s reminiscent of sri-racha, only thicker and less salty. But the BBQ sauce is truly something to behold. This stuff is sweet, spicy, thick and has serious depth. It takes a lot for get me psyched about BBQ sauce. Most brands out there just don’t do anything for me. But after tasting this, my love of BBQ sauce was renewed.
Here’s a shot of the nutritional info for your perusal.
And here’s a shot of Abe (left) and Kevin (right) from the 2016 International Restaurant & Foodservice Show, where I was able to taste all of this delicious shit, and even bring some home.
Kubara makes ready-made ramen broth. They currently offer shio (salt), shoyu (soy sauce) and yuzu shio (citrus salt) flavors. All are robust and full of flavor, but I like the shoyu (soy sauce) the best. All broths are based in seafood and kelp, but I am blown away by the depth and intensity they all have.
For more information about ramen, check out my Guide to Ramen Styles. Enjoy!
Meet Ariake, a concentrated ramen broth, bone stock and sauce supplier. Just add water to dilute and create the goods.
I was delighted to see that they use the correct terminology here. Bones make a stock, not a broth. This beef stock was very flavorful, but it had a bit of sweetness. I think it would grow on me after some time, but I was expecting a fattier, more savory flavor profile.
I tried their pork broth here. Perhaps it was diluted a bit to much, or needed to be presented with some actual meat, but it felt a little flat to me. I think if presented with actual meat it might be a bit better.
The sauces were interesting – there were many flavors!
This one caught my eye in particular:
While I didn’t have it with meat, I thought it was pretty good. It had a worschestshire kind of flavor, along with hints of meat gravy.
I recently went to a release event for Rockaway Brewery’s newest beer, “Meat in the Middle,” with the man behind The Dishelin Guide.
“Meat in the Middle” (4.8% abv) is a rauchbier that’s brewed with slow-smoked NY State barley. What makes it special and “meaty” is that it’s smoked with cherry wood at Brooklyn specialty butcher and sandwich shop, The Meat Hook.
The beer itself is pretty good. You get a hint of that smoke in there, with a malt-forward beer flavor. Very nice. I tried it in a flight of some other goodies. In this photo, it’s all the way on the left:
The porters and dark beers here are really fantastic:
After working up a little buzz, we hopped on one of the brewery tours and picked up some additional info about the brew process:
By then we were hungry, so we ventured upstairs to try some of the sausages that The Meat Hook was selling.
We tried both the Long Dong Bud and the Beet & Onion sausages.
Check out the color on the Beet & Onion. Incredible! It was really nice, and topped with a kale kimchi type of slaw that really made the flavors pop.
Long Dong Bud was topped with some shredded cheese, and a pineapple relish. It definitely had more of a traditional German type flavor profile, other than the relish.
We were torn on which we liked best. I went one way (Long Dong Bud), and Jay went the other (Beet & Onion). In any event, if you can get over to The Meat Hook and try these, I highly recommend them.
Ben Turley, a butcher from The Meat Hook, gave us a demo of how he breaks down a “rear quarter” of a cow – a beef shank (a back leg).
As he explained what he was doing, he trimmed off various specialty cuts within, like the oyster steak and merlot steak.
Here’s a shot of the oyster steak:
And some various other items like portions of the top round and eye of round.
He parted out the femur bone, too.
The coolest thing about this was that they were just slicing up parts of the lean beef sections and passing it around to eat raw, with just a little bit of salt on top. Awesome!
One of the thicker cuts benefited from just a quick, hot sear:
So this day was basically a dream come true. Good beer, Good food and a dead cow. And Ben basically has my dream job.
On my way out, I picked up a jar of this really crazy banana jam too, from Stagg Jam & Marmalade.
They had a table set up where you could try all four of their jams on crackers. This bacon jam has a hint of citrus and vanilla that really explodes with flavor.
ROCKAWAY BREWERY
46-01 5th St.
Long Island City, NY 11101
THE MEAT HOOK
100 Frost St.
Brooklyn, NY 11211
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.
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.
Whole Foods sells a reasonably priced black truffle salami at their cheese counter. The brand name is Vincenza. It’s not a bad item, and at about $6 for a chub, it comes in much cheaper than some of the high end truffle salami guys I’ve come across.
The flavor has a bit more of a spicy kick than other truffle salami brands I’ve tasted, but it still has a decent earthy, funky truffle essence. It’s not just truffle oil for the flavoring either – I can see the little black bits of truffle in the mix (it is also listed in the ingredients). That’s a good sign.
While it’s not my favorite truffle salami, it’s definitely good for when I’m looking to save a few bucks. And it’s seemingly always available in abundant quantities at the cheese counter.
It turns out this company makes some other decent salamis as well. I tried two more the following week and liked them both, though neither had the same earthy character as the truffle salami.
Venice style – similar to the truffle salami about, but without the truffle notes.
Cacciatorini style – slightly more garlicky and sweet.
My wife’s cousin, who is a chef in the DC area, gave her a “salami of the month” club subscription. Our first selection was this Boccalone brown sugar and fennel salami:
As you can tell by the white mold that envelopes the meat, this is a dry, aged salami.
The flavor is rich and intense, but not overpowering. It has sweetness and vibrance, but retains a solidly savory profile. I almost expected something like a breakfast sausage when I first read the flavor description, but this is a perfect meat snack for any time of day. Excellent selection!
This round of tubed meat comes from Trader Joe’s again – this time a Chianti salami.
This “wet” salami has a lightly sweet flavor due to the wine infusion, but comes heavy with garlic and fattiness.
This stuff melts in your mouth when sliced thin and peeled off the outer skin casing. I am actually considering frying some up with broccolini, asparagus or brussels sprouts. It would even make a nice gourmet pizza topping as well. But it is a solid standalone snack cold from the fridge as well.
This is a joint product/service and restaurant review. My buddies and I booked a small charter fishing trip off of Key West. For four hours it cost about $800 all-in (with tip and everything). While this is super expensive, it is worth every penny if you happen to be able to keep and eat everything that you catch.
We started off catching all the bait we would use on the trip. Captain Brad threw out his net and picked up minnows and shiners. Then we went out about five miles for some yellow fin snapper and yellow jackets. One of my buddies even got a mackerel at this spot. I had a shark hooked at one point, but the fucker bit through the line and took my bait.
After a bit, we went to a second location off the shore where we picked up some bonita and tuna.
Over all we had a really successful day. I caught the most fish, while my buddy got the biggest (a 15lb tuna).
Captain Brad filleted about half of our catch, which came out to roughly 14lbs.
That’s a lot of fish! We could have packed it on ice and shipped it home, but we figured we may as well gorge on it and give the rest for chum and whoever else wanted the meat. We probably caught over $1000 worth of fish.
The restaurant at the dock will cook up all your food for $12 per person, and you get sides to go with it. We fed our whole gang of eight people with tons to spare.
They did some fried snapper, tuna tataki, blackened tuna and buffalo mackerel. Everything was really good.
The conch fritters here were pretty good too, which we ordered in addition to the fish feast.
