Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Chocomize Beef Jerky Chocolate Bars

chocomize beef jerky chocolate barsChocomize is a company that let's you customize the ingredients of your chocolate bar, letting you choose from three types of belgian chocolate, and then choose from over 90 varieties of nuts, seeds, candies, seasonings, and even beef jerky.

Yeah, beef jerky chocolate bars!

And so the company was kind enough to send me a couple of beef jerky chocolate bars, a plain jerky bar, and one with pecans. Both are dark chocolate.

While beef jerky and chocolate is a crazy combination it's not really unheard of. It actually has quite a bit of folklore thanks to the Internet, and some companies have actually offered such products. Diva Chocolates, which is no longer in business, had offered beef jerky coated with chocolate dust, and you can read my reviews here.

Taste

The way the beef jerky chunks are laid out on these bars, they don't really alter the flavor of the chocolate. The dark chocolate still tastes like dark chocolate, and the beef jerky tastes like standard beef jerky.

The beef jerky itself does have some flavor of its own, but it's very simple tasting, and mostly just adds some saltiness. I pulled a piece of jerky off just to taste it on its own, and it's rather unremarkable, having a sweetness and saltiness, and little to no natural meat flavor.

I had inquired on what company makes the jerky, but couldn't get an answer.

At first it feels like I'm eating Raisinettes due to the chewy texture of the jerky. But chewing further, it clear these aren't raisins.

If you just want the chocolate, the beef jerky pieces are very easy to pull off. And if you just want the jerky, the chocolate doesn't stick to it. They seem to separate from each other quite well.

The bar with the pecans is perhaps a little more enjoyable because pecans seem to go better with chocolate. I tried to get a bite that contained both pecans and jerky but it's hard to do without getting a huge mouthful of chocolate based on the way these ingredients are laid out on the bar.

Together, the flavor of beef jerky and the flavor of dark chocolate still don't really go together well. I think it might be better for Chocomize to use smaller bits of jerky and mix them liberally into the chocolate, like the way do with krispies. That might actually mix the chocolate and jerky flavors into each other. On the other hand, doing that won't provide the visual novelty that these large chunks of jerky give off.

Either way, combining beef jerky with chocolate is still just that, a novelty. It would make a humorous gift to give the beef jerky lover in your life.

In fact, that's perhaps Chocomize's best application, gifting.

Looking Chocomize's full gamut of customizable ingredients, there's some really tasty combinations you could come up with just to satisfy your own unique tastes. The mini chipotles and sunflower seeds on milk chocolate sounds really good actually.

beef jerky chocolate bars

chocolate bee f jerky

chocolate jerky

beef jerky and chocolate
Snack Value

Chocomize bars typically run from $5.00 to $8.00 per bar, depending on which ingredients you throw on there, and how many ingredients.

The Pecan Beef Jerky bar pictured above costs $6.65. Chocomize adds a flat rate shipping of $4.90 per order, regardless of how many bars you order.

The bars themselves are hefty weighing in at 3.5 oz (100g) before they add the ingredients. The dimensions are about 6 x 3.5 inches, which is the standard size for fine european chocolate bars.

If you can order several bars, taking advantage of the flat-rate shipping, it's a pretty good value I think, considering it has a lot of gifting and novelty value.

Rating

chocolate smores barI'm giving this a good rating.

Overall I think the Chocomize concept is pretty cool, and the chocolate itself tastes pretty good, albeit I'm no chocolate expert.

But the beef jerky pieces in these chocolate bars are not really all that exciting. They don't seem to have much flavor other than some sweet and salty, and they don't have a good chewing texture either. Perhaps I could assign a higher rating if the jerky was of better quality, or used smaller bits blended into the chocolate to alter the flavor of the chocolate.

And while Chocomize let's you create some really tasty ingredient combinations just for your own sweet tooth, it's a great novelty and gifting value, and after showing these bars to my wife and friends, I certainly did get some smiles and raised eyebrows.

You can get a special 10% discount when ordering from Chocomize by entering the word, "bestbeefjerky" into the coupon section when checking out.

Rating: Good

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