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Product Reviews / Main Nibbles / Meat & PoultryGourmet Beef JerkyThe Jerky Guy & Double B Jerky Make Soft, Supple Snacks
CAPSULE REPORT: Beef Jerky isn’t just dry, tough stuff for tough guys to chew on. Top meats make top jerky, and there are new gourmet jerkys that make delicious snacks—and clever recipe ingredients, too. Preservative-free, you’d give them to your kids...if you were generous enough to give any away at all. The Jerky Guy makes jerky that melts in your mouth; Double B jerky is made from antibiotic- and hormone-free meat. From our early days on earth, Homo sapiens has been drying meat to preserve it: Meat drying over a smoky fire is protected from egg-laying insects and multiplying bacteria. Cutting it into thin strips makes it easier to chew. The word jerky comes from the Quechua language of the Incas, who called their dried meat “charqui.” While the prehistoric method of meat preservation was used by other ancient peoples, it was not known in Europe; the first visitors to the New World found Native Americans making jerky* from the meat of any animal they hunted (that which wasn’t consumed immediately). The pioneers quickly learned to make jerky since it was easy to transport and an important, high protein addition to their diet. The meat could be anything from buffalo to whale—and today jerky can be found in meats as common as turkey, tuna and salmon, to exotic alligator and ostrich. *The pemmican you may have read about in tales of early America was dried meat mixed with dried berries and rendered animal fat. It was invented by Native Americans and used extensively by immigrants in the fur trade, and many years later as a high-calorie food by Arctic and Antarctic explorers such as Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen. Today’s jerky eaters enjoy it as a snack rather than a necessity, and have the luxury of eating jerky marinated in a variety of spices, salt and/or sugar—seasonings not available to many ancients. All the fat is trimmed from the meat because fat doesn’t dry. The jerky is then dried in low-heat smokers—not hung on racks to dry in the sun as was done pre-modern day. But like ancient jerky, the modern product can be stored for long periods of time without refrigeration.
The Jerky Guy“The World’s Finest Gourmet Beef Jerky,” proclaims The Jerky Guy. We worry about absolutes, but he’s certainly got a fine jerky product, made in the U.S. from “select beef round.” The company is very conscientious about delivering the finest product, with no artificial preservatives or additives: soy sauce is specially made to avoid the preservative sodium benzoate, found in commercial soy sauces. The jerky is slow smoked over real wood chips, not liquid smoke, to enhance the aroma as well as the flavor. Tender, large pieces of meat, wonderfully flavored, do melt in your mouth.
The Jerky Guy products are 98% fat free and 80 calories per ounce except for Teriyaki, which is 100 calories per ounce.
Double BDouble B takes a different approach, smoking 100% natural beef jerky, turkey jerky and other meats over a variety of woods that produce subtle different flavor differences. All of the jerkys are peppery, and thicker-sliced than The Jerky Guy, so they’re a little chewier, less melt-in-your-mouth. But for people who like an all-natural product—top-round beef raised with no antibiotics or hormones, free-range hormone-free turkey—they hit the spot.
Prices and flavor availability are verified at publication but are subject to change. Shipping is additional. Serving SuggestionsYou can eat jerky from the bag, of course, or set it in a bowl, carry it in your briefcase, gym bag or backpack. But gourmet jerky is more than a snack—it’s an ingredient:
If you don’t have great knife skills, use a scissors to cut the jerky into strips or smaller pieces for dips, rice and potatoes. When people ask what those tasty pieces of meat are...be coy!
© Copyright 2005- 2008 Lifestyle Direct, Inc. All rights reserved. Images are the copyright of their respective owners.
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