Hi-Country Beef Jerky - Honey Kist TenderSlice Strips

Next in the series on Hi-Country Beef Jerky is this Honey Kist TenderSlice Strip Style jerky. See last week's review of their Original Flat Style.

Hi-Country Beef Jerky is a brand of Hi-Country Snack Foods, Inc. based out of Lincoln, MT. The company started out in 1976 strictly as a beef jerky manufacturer, then as sales increased, they added beef sausage to their line up. The company makes jerky from their own USDA inspected facility.

This Honey Kist flavor is described by Hi-Country as "a delicious twist on our Original recipe with a kiss of honey."

Ingredients

Beef, honey, sugar, brown sugar, salt, dextrose, pineapple juice, lemon juice, monosodium glutamate, spices, natural hickory smoke, natural flavor, sodium ascorbate, sodium nitrite.

Taste

The first thing I taste from the surface of these pieces is a sweetness, with just a touch of honey flavor.

The chewing flavor brings in a more defined honey flavor, but mixes in some saltiness. I can pick up faint touches of fruity flavor.

For being marketed as similar to their Original recipe, but with a "kiss of honey", it holds up somewhat. I do taste a light honey flavor, and an appropriately increased sweetness. However, I don't really see this as duplicating the Original recipe I found in the company's Original Flat Style jerky I reviewed last week, which had a touch more fruity character, and a noticeable black pepper.

Otherwise, the flavors that define this Honey Kist TenderSlice is largely a sweetness that dominates the first part of chewing, with a light honey flavor, but then shares the spotlight with some saltiness in the latter half. There's also a light natural meat flavor noticeable.

The level of saltiness in this feels moderate.

Overall, this is a very mild jerky, more mild than the Original Flat Style I reviewed last week, with an increased sweet.

Meat Consistency

This is a chopped-and-formed jerky, pressed into strips of five to six inches, and in thick slices.

This is a dry jerky with a dry surface feel. They have a moderate degree of flexibility, though retaining some stiffness. Chewing effort feels moderate.

The chewing texture starts out feeling like stiff rubber, and offers some rubbery resistance. As it breaks down in the chewing, it starts to take on a meaty feel, but doesn't mesh together into a steak-like chewing. Rather, the heavier sweet tends to make it feel more gummy and mushy.

These strips seem to feel meaty in that I didn't encounter any hard bits of matter. They are not greasy, oily, or stringy.

In terms of clean eating, these strips are very clean, leaving no residue on my fingers.

Snack Value

Hi-Country Snack Foods sells this Honey Kist TenderSlice Strips at a price of $11.95 for a 10oz package. If you buy two packages, shipping comes to $8.95. That works out to a price of $1.64 per ounce.

For general jerky snacking purposes at the $1.64 per ounce price, it's a fair value. I'm getting a low level of snackability, perhaps close to none, due to a low flavor, average chewing texture, though a good meat consistency. Compared to other major chopped-and-formed jerky brands, it's priced about the same, and is similarly flavored.

Rating

I'm giving this a fair rating.

This Honey Kist TenderSlice Strips from Hi-Country Beef Jerky offers a rather simple tasting, very mild flavor, consisting mostly of a light honey with moderately heavy sweetness, against a moderate saltiness and a touch of natural meat flavor.

Overall, it doesn't really give much to look forward to in flavor, and the chewing texture tends to be rubbery and chewy. Considering this is a chopped-and-formed jerky, it's meat consistency is actually slightly better than competing brands, considering it's mostly all meat.

Still, a jerky that's mostly just sweet and salty and little else doesn't do much for me, and doesn't really beckon me to eat more.

Rating: Fair

Buy this online:

• http://www.hicountry.com/