Saturday, April 26, 2008

Smokey's Beef Jerky - Sweet & Spicy

Smokey's Beef JerkySmokey'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 black pepper, and some sweetness. There also appears to be a soy sauce taste as well, though it could just be salt mixed with the beef flavors.

As a sweet & spicy variety, the spiciness is what I would consider mild, but probably could be "medium hot" for many others. I see a couple chili pepper seeds.

I do taste some natural beef flavors as well, but it's overpowered by the flavorings.

Meat Consistency

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

It's mostly dry, as most thin sliced jerky is, but still is still soft and easy to tear off and chew. I would not call this chewy by any means. If you prefer soft and tender jerky, I think you'd still enjoy this.

The pieces have some nice fat marblization.

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, I think it has "good" value in that does offer good taste and a good experience in tearing and chewing, as well as no preservatives and all natural ingredients. As a sweet & spicy variety, I prefer some more sweetness and a little bit more spiciness. I can find sweet & spicy jerky priced much less, offering similar jerky experience.

Smokey's Beef Jerky

Smokey's Beef Jerky

Rating

I'm giving this variety an "average" rating.

While it has good taste, and offers a soft consistency in a thinly sliced jerky, I didn't feel it offered much in the way of sweetness and spiciness. If you're going to offer a food as being "spicy", then make it spicy, because people who don't typically eat spicy food will not typically buy spicy food.

Still, I did enjoy this jerky for what it was. It had great snackability, and kept me reaching for more. It just didn't meet my expectation of a sweet & spicy variety. But I clearly understand that this is just my opinion, and many others will find this exceptional.

Rating: Average

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