Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Jedidiah's Beef Jerky - Sweet Barbecue

Jedidiah's Beef Jerky - Sweet BarbecueJedidiah's Jerky is a brand produced by Jedidiah's Jerky and Gourmet Snacks based out of Laughlin, NV.

The business was started by David Coffey in 2005. Coffey is a veteran of the meat snack industry having started with Polley's Jerky in 1984, and launching another brand of his, River Run Jerky. His father worked in the jerky business before him.

The Jedidiah's brand was created to represent unique styles and recipes that appeal to the dedicated jerky snacker. This Premium Line of jerky is their standard jerky, while their Private Reserve line is a soft and tender beef brisket variety.

You can watch a video of Coffey talking about his jerky...
http://www.thetalkmarket.com/video/product/446/

Ingredients

Beef, barbecue sauce, salt, sugar, monosodium glutamate, paprika, spices, garlic, sodium nitrite.

Taste

The surface taste from these pieces gives off an immediate sweetness, with maybe a slight sense of the barbecue sauce. It's mainly in the chew that most of the flavor comes out, and in there I pick up more barbecue taste. Some of the natural meat flavors come out as well.

For being billed as "sweet barbecue", it's certainly sweet, but I think it's more sweet than it is barbecue. There's still a definite barbecue flavor to this, however. In fact, all of Jedidiah's Premium line has this barbecue flavor to it, either on purpose or by accident. This jerky variety actually claims to have barbecue sauce in its ingredients. Meanwhile the other varieties in this line do not, but yet still give off the same barbecue likeness.

Overall, I still enjoy the barbecue flavor very much, and I do enjoy the sweetness also. The garlic in this variety is not as defined as it is in the other Jedidiah's Premium line, I think mostly because the sweetness seems stronger in this. But during the chew, I can pick up garlic more.

The natural meat flavors are present but hard to pick up. First off, it's not a strong meat flavor, it's only slight. But second, the sweet and barbecue flavors do well to drown it out.

The medium-to-high dosage of sodium listed in the Nutrition Facts below might make one turn away, however, I don't really taste the salt that much. While my blood pressure might feel the effects, my taste buds do not. It tells me there's just a moderate amount of salt.

It's largely the sweet, the barbecue, and the salt, in that order, that dominates the taste of this jerky. You'll get a slight resemblance of natural meat flavors and garlic to add to it. Overall, the taste of this combination is plentiful, and you'll find it very lip-smacking.

Meat Consistency

These are cuts of whole meat, sliced into medium and thick slices, and in small to medium sized pieces.

For the most part, this review sample provides a dry jerky, but being familiar with this brand, as well as the private labeler that made this jerky, it can vary. I've seen this as soft and tender. It just varies from package to package.

It's moderately easy to tear apart, and somewhat more easy to chew. You're better off letting a piece soak in your mouth for several seconds just to enjoy all the surface flavor. Then give it some chews and enjoy the flavors that leach out.

As you can see in the photos below, several pieces have bits of fat on them. I didn't find this to ruin the taste at all. The fat was largely tasteless. I did find one larger piece with quite a bit of connective tissue, some tendon and some gristle. It was very tough to tear apart and chew. Otherwise, the rest of the meat looked pretty free of such chewy nonesense.

Jedidiah's Beef Jerky - Sweet Barbecue

Jedidiah's Beef Jerky - Sweet Barbecue
Product Value

Jedidiah's sells this Premium Honey Barbecue variety from their website at a price of $5.99 for a 3.5oz bag. That works out to $1.71 per ounce, putting this in the average price range.

For general jerky snacking purposes, it's worth buying. It's has a great taste, and decent-to-good meat consistency, that's not excessively salty. It's enough to create some great snackability, that kept me reaching for more.

For being a "sweet barbecue" variety, I found a very delicious barbecue taste that was heavier on the sweet side, with some slight garlic taste, and a bit of natural meat flavors. If you like everything and anything barbecue flavored, then you'll want to spend your money on this.

Rating

I'm giving this a best rating.

This Sweet Barbecue variety from Jedidiah's offers a great taste of sweet barbecue flavor that I found irresistible as a meat lover. While the meat consistency in this review sample is not excellent, it's still not bad. And as I said, that can vary from package to package. And it's not even overly salty by taste. While it was rather weak on natural meat flavors, I still enjoyed this jerky's flavorings quite a bit.

Moreover, this jerky is heavy on flavor, which lends itself to being savored longer in your mouth, and will extend your snacking time.

And if you're going to savor some jerky, then enhance it with a really good beer. Might I suggest a wheat beer (hefeweizen)?

Rating: Best

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1 comment:

  1. If you enjoy this beef jerky you might also like Ray's Own Brand Hickory Smoked Orginal or Teriyki Beef Jerky!

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