Last in the series on Empire Jerky Works is this Peppered Teriyaki variety. See my previous reviews of their Original, Peppered, and Teriyaki varieties.

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, sugar, water, soy sauce solids, salt, natural spices and flavoring, hydrolyzed soy protein, monosodium glutamate, garlic powder, guar gum, polysorbate 80, caramel color powder, spice extractives, sodium nitrite.

Taste

The first thing I taste from the surface of these pieces is a heavy sweetness, mixed with a fair amount of smoky flavor. There's a light saltiness too.

The chewing flavor starts with much of the same, but with some black pepper flavor.

For being labeled as "Peppered Teriyaki", it seems to hold up on the Peppered part. After eating a few pieces, I'm getting a strong black pepper flavor and aftertaste. But on the teriyaki part, not quite. I do taste the teriyaki sauce in this, but I don't taste any of the flavor overtones that define real teriyaki from just sweetened soy sauce. And that's what this tastes like, sweetened soy sauce.

And that combination of black pepper and sweetened soy sauce is the dominant flavor of this jerky. There's still a light smokiness, but it has that liquid smoke flavor, not so much a real wood smoke flavor.

This jerky also has a slimy feel once I put a piece into my mouth.

The level of saltiness in this feels to be at a higher intensity, maybe exacerbated by the heavier black pepper spice.

Overall, what you're going to taste in this is a heavy black pepper flavor and a teriyaki sauce that tastes more like sweetened soy sauce and not like real teriyaki. You'll also get a light liquid smoke flavor, and a good deal of saltiness.

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 with a dry surface feel, but still having a lot of flexibility, being able to bend all the way back on itself without cracking. Biting off chunks requires some chewing and twisting, while chewing is chewy, and just a bit laborious.

The chewing texture starts off feeling chewy and stiff, with a fair amount of initial chewing resistance. Some labored chewing is required before it starts to break down, but once it breaks down, the chewing becomes very easy and chews down to a soft quickly. At that point, it has a meaty feel, but not like a real piece of steak. It still has a gummy, slimy texture.

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, my fingers don't pick up any residue. Biting off chunks does drop a few tiny fragments of meat however.




Snack Value

Empire Jerky Works sells this Peppered Teriyaki 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 decent value. I'm getting a good snackability for an overall satisfying flavor, good meat consistency, though chewy, tough chewing. 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 Teriyaki beef jerky, at the same $1.99 per ounce price, it's a fair value. It does provide a lot of black pepper flavor with plenty of cracked pepper bits. But I don't really see this as true teriyaki beef jerky, in that it doesn't taste like real teriyaki sauce. It's just a sweetened soy sauce flavor without the subtle overtones that define good teriyaki from subpar teriyaki.

Rating

I'm giving this an average rating.

This Peppered Teriyaki from Empire Jerky Works provides a lot of black pepper spice against a heavily sweet teriyaki flavor to effect what is basically a more spicy version of the company's Teriyaki variety. It's not a true teriyaki sauce flavor in that it doesn't have any of the tangy and pungent flavor overtones that make good teriyaki.

But it still does a good job of presenting the sweet & salty flavor profile that many Americans seem to enjoy, but in this case adds the black pepper spice to give you that extra flavor contrast.

Still, I don't see this as being above average when compared against the 240+ other brands of jerky I've reviewed thus far. There isn't anything extraordinary about the flavor or meat consistency. But what it does is provide an overall good jerky to snack on when you get the urge to eat something.

Interestingly, this Peppered Teriyaki tastes very similar to the company's plain Peppered variety. Even that Peppered variety has a teriyaki flavor to it. If anything this Peppered Teriyaki has just a touch more sweet, while the plain Peppered has a touch more pepper.

I think a good beer pairing for this would be something light to counter the heavier saltiness and strong pepper. Go with a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale or the Anchor Steam.


Rating: Average

Buy this online:

• http://empirecigarandjerkyworks.com/