Longview Beef Jerky - Honey Garlic

Continuing with the series on Longview Beef Jerky is this Honey Garlic beef jerky. Read my reviews of their other flavors.

Longview Beef Jerky is a brand of Longview Meat & Merchandise Ltd., based out of Longview, Alberta, Canada. The company has been making their jerky for the past 30 years. They claim their beef jerky is made from Canadian grown cattle. You can't buy Longview Beef Jerky in the USA, but you can find it at gas stations and stores throughout Canada.

The company sent me samples because rodeo is a really big deal in Alberta, and every July the Calgary Stampede attracts cowboy fans from the USA up into that area.

Ingredients

Beef, honey & garlic sauce (water, sugar, honey, modified corn starch, soy sauce, garlic powder, phosphoric acid, salt, caramel, citric acid, sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate, molasses), sugar, spices, honey powder, garlic powder, prague powder (salt, sodium nitrite), sodium erythorbate.

Taste

The first thing I taste from the surface of these pieces is a strong garlic flavor, followed quickly by a heavy sweetness. There's a little bit of saltiness noticeable too.

The chewing flavor starts with a bit more garlic, but also a easily identifiable onion flavor, and maybe a tad more sweet.

For being labeled "Honey Garlic", this jerky seems to hold up well to those words. I get a strong sweet flavor all throughout, as well as a strong easily recognizable garlic flavor. And I can also pick up some of the unique flavor of honey and not just a heavy sweet. Between the two, the garlic is the more dominant flavor and is what seems to represent this jerky the most.

The only other flavors I can get out of this jerky is an onion flavor in the chewing, and a light overall saltiness. The onion flavor is not noticeable at all on the surface, but as soon as I start chewing it comes out. Think of it as like a garlic & onion seasoning, but heavier on the garlic.

The level of saltiness in this seems light.

I pick up no natural meat flavors.

Overall, what you're going to notice in this is a combination of heavy garlic, a strong sweetness, and then lighter amounts of onion and saltiness.

Meat Consistency

These are slices of whole meat, sliced to a medium thickness, and in small to medium sized pieces.

This is a semi-moist jerky with a sticky surface feel. There's a good deal of flexibility in these pieces, bending almost all the way around without cracking. Tearing pieces apart with my fingers is somewhat easy, but with some stringiness adding some difficultly. Chewing is mixed, varying from easy to moderate.

The chewing texture starts out feeling soft and tender, with no chewing resistance. It seems to break down and chew down to a soft mass quite easily and quickly. At that point, it's somewhat steak-like, but more soft and a little mushy.

These pieces have some visible streaks of fat in them. I also found some gristle in these pieces that resulted in some unchewable wads of tissue. And even the pieces with no gristle, I still encountered some stringiness.

In terms of clean eating, my fingertips pick up a lot of stickiness that requires a licking and wiping before touching my keyboard. I didn't find any fragments of meat flying off as I tore pieces.




Snack Value

Longview Beef Jerky retails for $5.98 Canadian Dollars in most stores throughout Canada, in a 80g (2.82oz) package. Under current US exchange rates, that's pretty much the same in US Dollars. That works out to $2.12 per ounce.

For general jerky snacking purposes, at the $2.12 per ounce price, it seems to offer a fair value. I'm getting a low level of snackability due to an overall satisfactory flavor, but a stringy, mushy, chewing texture. That price is slightly higher than what you'd pay for other major brands of jerky in grocery stores, and yet has a comparable or lower snackability.

As a Honey Garlic beef jerky, at the same $2.12 per ounce price, it's a good value. I'm getting a lot of sweet honey flavor, and a strong garlic flavor.

Rating

I'm giving this a fair rating.

This Honey Garlic beef jerky from Longview Beef Jerky does a good job of belting out its advertised flavor with a heavy honey sweetness and a strong garlic flavor all throughout the chewing. But it doesn't really provide much else, aside from lighter amounts of onion and saltiness. There's no natural meat flavors in this, no smokiness, nothing spicy.

On top of that, the chewing texture is mushy, and rather stringy. There's a bit of steak-like feel to it, but mostly mushy, as if some kind of alien virus from outer space attacked a cow and rendered its meat into Play-Doh.

My recommended beer pairing for this, go with a dark smoky porter to help make the flavors in this jerky really pop. Try a Stone Smoked Porter or a Michelob Porter.

Rating: Fair

Buy this online:

• http://www.longviewjerky.com/