Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Hangtown Beef Jerky - Original

hangtown beef jerky
Hangtown Beef Jerky is a brand owned by Glenwood Smoked Products, based out of Idaho Falls, ID. The company was started back in 1961 by Glen C Scott as a maker of smoked turkeys.

Since then, the company has gone on to expand its smoked meat products, including even wild game processing, and of course, makes beef jerky.

Glenwood also has a line of jerky named "Glenwood Beef Jerky", which is actually the company's original jerky brand. Hangtown is a recent brand, and I'm led to believe is a different recipe, and is also being marketed through Amazon.com.

Ingredients

Beef, brown sugar, water, salt, apple juice, honey, lemon juice, black pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, monosodium glutamate, sodium nitrite, liquid smoke.

Taste

The first I taste from the surface of these pieces is a faint sweetness and a light saltiness. There's a subtle black pepper in there too.

The chewing flavor starts with a bit more saltiness and a bit more sweet. There's a smidgen of seasoning inside, and that subtle black pepper picks up just a tiny bit.

The flavors that seem to define this jerky most of all is the sweet, though it's not overly sweet, it's actually moderate at is peak. The light saltiness is the next most noticeable flavor, with perhaps the onion, garlic, and black pepper seasonings having a small footprint.

The natural meat flavors are hardly noticeable, and despite the addition of liquid smoke, it doesn't seem to be easily identifiable.

Overall, it's a light tasting jerky, mostly sweet with light touches of seasonings.

Meat Consistency

These appear to be slices of whole meat, sliced against the grain, into medium sized slabs, and sliced to a medium thickness.

It's a dry jerky with a dry surface feel. They have a lot of flexibility, quite pliable, and easily bendable like soft rubber. Biting off pieces take a little bit of work to do, while chewing is slightly "chewy".

The chewing texture starts out with some chewing resistance, and otherwise feels somewhat tough and rubbery. But it seems to soften up quickly and then chews down to a soft mass easily. By then, it has a meaty, steak-like feel, similar to a steak cooked medium-rare.

I don't see any bits of fat on these pieces, but I do some streaks of gristle, which felt rubbery and would not chew. I also found a fair amount of stringiness.

As for clean eating, my fingers don't pick up any residue and tearing pieces apart doesn't seem to drop any fragments of meat or seasoning.

hangtown beef jerky

hangtown beef jerky
Snack Value

Glenwood Smoked Products sells this Original variety at $33.00 for three 10oz packages. I don't have shipping costs, but if we just throw in $6.00, then it would work out to a price of $1.30 per ounce.

For general jerky snacking purposes at the $1.30 per ounce price, this seems to offer a good value. It has a satisfactory flavor at best, with a decent meat consistency, and decent chewing texture. It's priced considerably less than what you'd pay for major brands of jerky in stores, yet this offers a similar snackability.

Rating

I'm giving this an average rating.

This Original variety from Hangtown Beef Jerky is mostly a mild flavored jerky with a mild flavor intensity. It's best described as a sweet jerky with light touches of salt, garlic, onion, and black pepper.

The flavor doesn't really excite the taste buds, though it still satisfies the urge to snack. The chewing texture is decent, the meat consistency is decent minus some streaks of gristle and stringiness. But overall, this jerky doesn't go out its way to offer you something special.

It's advantage is that its priced low, but manages to stay one step above the bargain brands in terms of flavor and chewing texture. It's like getting a Jack Link's caliber of jerky at much less price.

Rating: Average

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