Thursday, August 13, 2009

Monty's Smoked Beef Jerky - Tenderfoot

Monty's Smoked Beef Jerky Monty's Smoked Beef Jerky is a new brand of beef jerky hitting the national market earlier this year. Based in Bird City, KS, it's a family run business co-owned by Robyn Raile, her husband Tim, and her brother Wade.

The brand originally started out as Monte Nuss Beef Jerky in a little store in Littleton, CO back in 1996. After Nuss closed shop, he sold it to Wade, who then moved the business to Bird City, KS, and relaunched it as Monty's Smoked Beef Jerky.

The company adds no preservatives in their jerky, and smokes the meat over hickory chunks, though also adds smoke flavoring. They offer five varieties, including this Tenderfood, which appears to be closest to a basic flavor, and a "Red Hot Sweetie", which I'll be reviewing later.

Ingredients

Beef, water, soy sauce, sugar, red pepper sauce, black pepper, natural hickory smoke flavoring, salt, garlic, onion, herbs, spices.

Taste

The first thing I taste from the surface of these pieces is a smoky flavor, an oily flavor, and a meaty aroma. I get a faint bit of saltiness with some sucking. Overall, a light surface flavor.

The chewing flavor starts with some natural meat flavors, a bit more saltiness, and a light seasoning flavor, perhaps a combination of the garlic and onion.

The overall flavor of this jerky is largely that smoky natural meat flavor. There's just a tad bit of soy sauce flavor in the meat that helps bring it out. The oiliness of these strips perhaps boosts the sense of tasting real beef.

The second-most dominant flavor is the seasoning, marked by a moderate saltiness and a garlic & onion flavor.

I don't really notice the red pepper sauce listed in the ingredients. I can see bits of black pepper on these strips, but I don't really notice the flavor.

Otherwise it's a mild tasting jerky anchored by a smoky natural meat flavor with some salt, garlic, and onion flavoring.

Meat Consistency

These are slices of whole meat, cut into thin strips of about 4-6 six inches long, and 1/4 to 1/2 inches wide.

This is a dry jerky with a lot of oil on the surface, and a little bit brittle. It's easy to bite off a chunk, and chewing seems easy.

The chewing texture starts off feeling stiff and brittle, and easily breaks apart with some light biting. Chewing it down to a soft mass is just a little bit labored, but overall easy. Once down to a soft mass, it feels mostly crumbly with a little bit of a steak-like feel.

Much of this jerky appears to be very lean, I only see some very small bits of fat on some strips, but no tendon or gristle, and very little stringy sinews.

It's rather messy to eat, being very oily and requiring a finger licking and jeans wiping with each handling.

beef jerky

beef jerky
Snack Value

Monty's Smoked Beef Jerky sells this Tenderfoot variety from its website at a price of $24.50 for an 8oz package. If you buy two packages, the shipping comes out to $9.60 (if sent to Southern California), for a total of $58.60. That works out to a price of $3.66 per ounce.

For general jerky snacking purposes, at the $3.66 price per ounce, it's a weak value. I get a good deal of snackability for its good overall flavor, good meat consistency, and ok chewing texture. However, that $3.66 price per ounce is very expensive for gourmet jerky. Even though I get plenty of snackability from this, I can still get similar or better snackability from other gourmet brands anywhere from $1.00 to $2.00 less per ounce.

Rating

I'm giving this a good rating.

This Tenderfoot variety from Monty's Smoked Beef Jerky is a mild tasting jerky that gives out a smoky natural meat flavor with some garlic, onion, and salt seasoning.

It's easy to bite chunks off of these strips, being sliced thin, and somewhat brittle. It's fairly easy to chew, though maybe just a little bit labored. But the chewing texture still ends up mostly crumbly than anything, but I still get some steak-like chewing.

For being a mild variety of jerky it's actually pretty good mostly for its smoky natural meat flavor, and I found myself teetering between a "good" or "best" rating. But I opted to stay with "good" because of the crumbly chewing texture.

I think a good beer pairing for this is a lightly flavored cream ale or kolsch.

Rating: Good

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