Next in the series on Empire Jerky Works is this Peppered Beef Jerky. See my previous review of their Original Beef Jerky.

Empire Jerky Works is a brand of Empire Jerky Works based out of Citrus Heights, CA. The company has been selling jerky since 2007.

The company was started by Brian Ingraham who started making his own jerky in 1975 using an old family recipe, and for many years shared it with friends and business associates. Due to positive feedback he hired a USDA inspected meat processor and got into the business of selling jerky. Today Empire Jerky Works is sold through casinos, taverns, stores, and motorcycle rallies throughout Northern California, as well as its own website.

Ingredients

Beef, soy sauce, teriyaki sauce, brown sugar, spices, liquid smoke, garlic.

Taste

The first thing I taste from the surface of these pieces is a saltiness, followed by a fair amount of sweet. A black pepper flavor is also noticeable, mixed with a light liquid smoke flavor.

The chewing flavor starts with the teriyaki sauce, but with a stronger black pepper flavor.

For being labeled as "Peppered", this does indeed offer a well-noticeable black pepper flavor, both on the surface and in the chewing. There also a good deal of cracked black pepper bits covering these pieces.

And the black pepper flavor seems to have the dominant flavor in this jerky. It's a strong flavor that creates a burn on my tongue as well as a strong aftertaste in the back of my mouth.

The natural meat flavors in this are barely noticeable. I tend to taste the liquid smoke flavoring more than I do the natural meat flavors.

The saltiness in this feels like is medium, but it's hard to tell because the black pepper leaves a strong imprint on my tongue that it's difficult to pick up the other flavors.

Overall, this is very comparable to the company's Original variety I reviewed last week, where I taste a good deal of teriyaki sauce, mainly as a noticeable soy sauce, and a lot of sweet, but not so much the finer points of ginger or mirin wine. For all intents and purposes, this Peppered variety appears to be exactly as the Original variety, but with a sprinkling of black pepper.

Meat Consistency

These are slices of whole meat, sliced to a medium thickness, and cut into strips ranging from three to seven inches.

This is a dry jerky, having a mostly dry surface feel, but still a little sticky in some places. The strips are sliced with the grain, with the grain running end-to-end, and still have a lot of flexibility, being able to bend all the way back on themselves without cracking open. Biting off chunks is a little tough compared to the Original variety which seemed easy. Chewing is quite chewy, bordering on tough.

The chewing texture starts off feeling stiff and chewy. These strips present a fair amount of chewing resistance, and requires a good deal of chewing pressure and chewing labor to get it to break open and chew down. Once down to a soft mass, it has a meaty feel but not like a real piece of steak. There's a mushy quality, and even a slight gummy quality, probably due to the sugary glaze, and slight crumbly nature.

I don't see any visible signs of fat on these strips, nor do I see any gristle or tendon. I didn't encounter any stringiness in the chewing, and didn't end up with any unchewable wads of tissue.

As for clean eating, there's a fine film of stickiness on my fingertips, but still dry enough to type on my keyboard. A few bits of black pepper stick to my fingers, but are easily rubbed off before I type.




Snack Value

Empire Jerky Works sells this Peppered variety from its website at a price of $6.00 for a 4oz package. If you bought four packages, and had it sent to Southern California, the shipping works out to $5.95 plus sales tax of $1.86, for a total cost of $31.81. That's a price of $1.99 per ounce.

For general jerky snacking purposes, at the $1.99 per ounce price, it's a good value. I'm getting a good snackability for an overall satisfying flavor, good meat consistency, easy eating, and average chewing texture. Compared to the major brands of jerky you find at grocery stores, it's pretty much the same price and offering a slightly better snackability.

As a Peppered beef jerky, at the same $1.99 per ounce price, it's also a good value. I'm getting a lot of black pepper flavor, along with lots of cracked black pepper bits all over these pieces.

Rating

I'm giving this an average rating.

This Peppered beef jerky from Empire Jerky Works offers up a lot of black pepper flavor starting from the surface flavors and lasting all through the chewing. There's enough to put some burn on my tongue and paint a strong aftertaste in the back of my mouth.

This jerky seems very much the same as the company's Original variety I reviewed last week, but with more black pepper flavor. The Original actually offers a lighter black pepper flavor if you don't like it this strong. But this Peppered variety gives you cracked pepper corns, whereas the Original gives you ground pepper.

But even with the stronger black pepper flavor, I still don't see this jerky as having a more unique, or more special quality that puts it into the upper echelon of jerky brands. Like the Original, it has a snackable flavor that satisfies quickly, and works well for that purpose, but it's not something for the gourmet jerky aficionado. I did however, find this Peppered variety to be more tough to chew than the Original. That may simply be a variance in the batches.

My recommended beer pairing for this, I'd stick with the lighter tasting pale ale, like the Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, or the Anchor Steam.

Rating: Average

Buy this online:

• http://empirecigarandjerkyworks.com/