Thursday, July 2, 2009

Rocky Mountain Organic Meats - Peppered Honey

Rocky Mountain Organic Meats - Peppered HoneyRocky Mountain Organic Meats is a brand of Rocky Mountain Custom Cuts, Inc., based out of Powell, WY. The company focuses on offering only grass-fed beef products, certified USDA Organic.

All the cattle used in their products are raised in the Rocky Mountain region of the USA, and roam free on certified organic pastures. The animals receive no hormones, no antibiotics, and no steroids. The company adds no MSG, and no nitrites to their jerky, and is gluten free.

This Honey Peppered Jerky is one of two varieties they offer. The other is just Honey (without the pepper).

Ingredients

Beef, honey, water, sugar, seasalt, black pepper, red pepper, celery juice powder, garlic, lactic starter culture.

Taste

The first thing I taste from the surface of these pieces is a fair amount of sweet, a light smoky aroma, and a bit of saltiness. Overall, it's a moderate surface flavor intensity.

The chewing flavor starts with some natural meat flavors, an increased saltiness, and a light bit of black pepper.

For being advertised as "Peppered Honey", this jerky provides a light sense of those flavors. I taste a clear sweetness, in a light intensity, while the unique honey flavor is at a light level. The black pepper is more noticeable than the honey, but still light on an individual piece basis. Over several pieces, the black pepper tends to build its intensity, and provides a moderate flavor.

There's also red pepper listed in the ingredients, and I do see a few chile pepper seeds, but I don't really taste any of the flavor. There's a very weak spicy burn in the back of my mouth, but still only registers as "mild" on my hot scale.

Otherwise, the component that seems to provide the bulk of this jerky's flavor is the natural meat flavors. It's not a strong flavor, but still strong enough to easily notice.

The level of saltiness seems to be moderate.

Overall, what you're going to notice in this jerky is mostly the natural meat flavors in a moderate intensity. You'll notice a light bit sweet, honey, and black pepper flavor.

Meat Consistency

These are strips of whole meat, cut into lengths ranging from 2-4 inches, and in widths and thicknesses.

This is a semi-moist jerky, with a lot of flexibility. It's easy to bite off chunks, and easy to chew.

The chewing texture starts off feeling soft and tender. With a just little bit of sucking and light biting, it breaks apart, and takes on a steak-like chewing texture. I don't notice any crumbly, mushy, or gummy texture.

For the most part, I don't see any streaks of fat, except for one piece I found that had a small bit, which provided some additional fatty flavor. Otherwise, I found no tendon, gristle, and no stringy sinews.

It's also pretty clean eating, leaving no residue on my fingers, and no small fragments flying off to my lap or desk.




Snack Value

Rocky Mountain Organic Meats sells this Peppered Honey variety from its website at a price of $6.99 for a 3oz package. They had a flat rate shipping fee of $24.00, regardless of how many packages you order, or to where it ships to. So, if you buy 10 packages of this stuff, it'll work out to a per ounce price of $3.13.

For general jerky snacking purposes, at the $3.13 price per ounce, it's a weak value. I do get a good deal of snackability from this, due to a moderate, but good natural meat flavor, good meat consistency and chewing texture. But that's a steep price to pay if you just want an all-purpose jerky to snack on, and while I think it's good jerky, I'm not getting enough "heaven" from this to justify that price.

It's really as a certified USDA Organic jerky, from grass fed beef, that you'll find a good value in this. If that's important to you, you'll get that, plus some good natural meat flavors. You'll still need to buy this in bulk to drive down that shipping cost, and make it cheaper per ounce.

Rating

I'm giving this a good rating.

This Peppered Honey variety from Rocky Mountain Organic Meats is defined by a good tasting natural meat flavor, in a moderate intensity, and then lightly colored with some sweet, honey, black pepper, and salt.

It's also easy to eat, in a semi-moist consistency, and has a good, steak-like chewing texture. What keeps me back from assigning the higher "best" rating is that the flavor intensity overall is just one notch low from where I'd like it to be. Perhaps adding some more smokiness, to bring out that meat flavor, is all that's needed.

But among all the certified USDA Organic jerky brands I've had, this is the first that actually provides a good deal of natural meat flavors. Other brands just don't seem to offer that. You'd think that by offering beef free of hormones, steroids, antibiotics, and grass-fed, using all organic ingredients, you'd could taste beef they way Mother Nature intended. But no, those other brands gave me zip, which made me wonder why I would ever bother spending the extra money to get USDA Organic jerky. So, hats off to Rocky Mountain Organic Meats for giving me a reason.

My recommended beer pairing for this, try a brown ale.

Rating: Good

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