Smokey's Beef Jerky - Chile Lime

Smokey's Beef Jerky is a little jerky business in Big Bear Lake, CA, located right on Big Bear Lake Blvd inside a little house. They also sell candies and coffee blends.

All their jerky is presented inside a display case, it's not sealed in plastic bags like so much other jerky is. But that only means you have to eat it right away, or otherwise it dries out and loses its freshness. They don't use any preservatives and is made 100% all natural ingredients.

Taste

Because I don't have a package label, I can't give you an ingredients list.

Mostly what I taste right away is chili powder and some saltiness. As for the "lime", there is in fact a citrus-like overtone, but the chili powder flavor is largely what dominates this variety. The small pieces of chili pepper add enough spiciness that I'd classify this as "medium hot".

There is perhaps a faint taste of the natural beef flavors.

Meat Consistency

These are made with real slices of beef, sliced average, and cut into large pieces.

The piece I have here for review is very dry, and rather tough to tear off and chew. Each chunk I tear off leaves tiny white frayed fibers sticking out. A sign of being overly dry. It's more of a "man's jerky".

This piece appears to be very lean, I don't see much fat on this at all.

Product Value

I paid $16.50 for 8 ounces of mixed variety. That works out to $2.06 per ounce, putting this into the expensive category. Note that the company's website shows a price of $15.00 for 8 ounces, which would put it at $1.88 per ounce, just barely into the "average" ballpark.

As a beef jerky, this Chile Lime variety doesn't offer much value considering its high price point, mainly because the experience it offers is ruined by it being very dry and very tough to tear and chew. But it does offer good value as a chile lime variety because you get a lot of chile taste in the powder and pieces of chile pepper, but just don't get much lime flavoring.





Rating

I'm giving this variety a "fair" rating.

It's best merit is that it offers plenty of chile flavoring in a chile lime variety, and overall the taste is good. It's just that being overly dry and very tough, ruins the snackability, and ruins the whole jerky experience. It had me losing my interest for this variety, even though I liked it's chile taste. Perhaps it was just my review piece that was particularly bad.

It would be nice to get some more lime flavor too.

Rating: Fair

Buy this online:

• Smokey's Beef Jerky