Thursday, March 19, 2009

Fesperman's Beef Jerky - Original

Fesperman's Beef Jerky Fesperman's Beef Jerky is a brand of Fesperman's Beef Jerky, Inc., of Twin Hills, OK. It was launched by Curtis and Lynn Fesperman back in 1997, but the couple have been making and selling their jerky since before then.

I've seen this particular brand on some other blogs getting high marks for taste, texture, and easy eating.

The company claims that their jerky is made using the same formula and process that Lynn started out originally in her kitchen. They marinate the meat for 12 hours in their own USDA inspected facility.

In addition to this Original variety, I have their Garlic variety which I'll be reviewing later on.


Ingredients

Beef, soy sauce, brown sugar, worcestershire sauce, smoke flavoring, pepper, salt, garlic powder with 2% calcium stearate.

Taste

The first thing I taste off the surface of these pieces is a slight worcestershire flavor that gains intensity with further sucking. There's also a light sweetness to this. I could also taste traces of smokiness here and there. When I start chewing, the worcestershire becomes more defined, to where I can detect more of its ingredients, while the light sweetness continues. Meanwhile, some saltiness becomes evident.

After a few pieces of this jerky, one thought comes to mind is that it's rather plain in taste. The worcestershire sauce and that touch of sweet is nice, but it's light to medium in terms of intensity, and that's really all I'm getting, aside from additional saltiness.

The dominant flavor of this jerky is the worcestershire sauce, which starts from the surface flavors, which becomes more defined in the chewing. It's not a strong flavor that awakens your senses, but medium in intensity. That light sweetness is just enough to soften the worcestershire's pungent and salty flavor, and not compete against it.

The level of saltiness seems light intensity, and is mostly noticeable at the tail end of chewing when the worcestershire sauce starts wearing off.

The natural meat flavors are pretty much absent.

The pepper is not noticeable either, but I do pick up a faint garlic taste, though that could also come from the worcestershire.

Overall, what you're going to taste in this is light to medium worcestershire sauce flavor, tempered with a light sweetness, and towards the latter part of chewing, some saltiness.

Meat Consistency

These appear to be slices of whole meat, in a slab style form, medium thickness, and in small to medium sized pieces.

It's a dry jerky that cracks open with a fair amount of bending. Tearing pieces apart with my fingers require a moderate amount of effort, mostly to separate the sinews inside the meat. Chewing is moderately easy, or moderately tough, however you want to look at it.

The chewing texture starts out with a very stiff piece of meat that encourages you to suck and bite gently to soften up. Then it starts breaking down and in about 10-15 seconds I have something that feels pretty much like a steak cooked well-done. Most of these pieces, however, contain chewy sinews that remain my mouth as unchewable wads of tissue.

The pieces all appear to be very lean, seeing no chunks or streaks of fat, no tendon and no gristle.

It's also pretty clean eating, not really finding any meat fragments falling off as I tear pieces apart, and no residue on my fingers.




Snack Value

Fesperman's Beef Jerky sells all of their varieties at a price of $8.00 for a 4oz package. I bought two packages, and with shipping cost added in, for a total of $21.50. That works out to a price of $2.69 per ounce, putting this into the expensive price range.

For general jerky snacking purposes, at this $2.69 per ounce price, it seems to present a weak value. I'm getting a fair amount of snackability. It has a nice flavor, though largely just a worcestershire sauce with some sweet, but the chewing becomes problematic with a considerable amount of chewy sinews. If you contrast that with its high price per ounce, it seems to create quite a disparity in the return on investment.

Rating

I'm giving this an average rating.

This original variety from Fesperman's Beef Jerky provides an average amount of snackability compared to the "universe" of beef jerky brands I've reviewed thus far, which is enough to earn the average rating. It's flavor is pleasing and snackable, but didn't go beyond the call of duty to get a higher rating.

The biggest negative I found is with the amount of chewy sinews in the meat. It seems every bite I took resulted in a wad of unchewable tissue which subtracted from my overall meat chewing pleasure. Also, the fact that I could not taste any natural meat flavors meant that the seasonings and marinade had to be that much more better to make up for those shortcomings.

There's certainly nothing bad about this jerky's flavor, but being mostly just a worcestershire and brown sugar flavor, there just doesn't seem to be anything exciting about it. Yet, it still seems to please more than the mass-market jerky brands you find at grocery and convenience stores.

I'd recommend a brown ale to go along with this.

Rating: Average

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