Silverhawks Journey Beef Jerky - Teriyaki

Silverhawks Journey is an online store that sells Native American keepsakes, clothing, jewelry and jerky, run by Jennifer Martin and Sean Symanski of East Stroudsburg, PA.

The two have been making beef jerky for quite some time, and then in 2009 saw the birth of their son whom they named Silverhawk, and from there his journey became theirs. To date, the family has been selling wares on eBay, but are looking to get their product in other stores.

Silverhawks Journey currently produces five flavors of jerky, including this Teriyaki, along with a Hot & Spicy BBQ, a regular BBQ, a Hickory Brown Sugar, and their Original. As of this writing, I only have the Teriyaki to review.

Ingredients

None provided.

Taste

The first thing I taste from the surface of these pieces is a fair amount of sweet and a moderate amount of black pepper. Some saltiness comes in later, and there's some saucy flavor, similar to soy sauce.

The chewing flavor starts with some natural meat flavors, a well-noticed garlic flavor, and a bit more definition from the soy sauce. The saltiness seems to pick up some more.

For being marketed as a teriyaki beef jerky, it seems to hold up. It has a sweetness to it, but not the thick, heavy sweet I'm accustomed to with most teriyaki. The soy sauce seems to have the stronger component in the teriyaki flavor. I'm not getting the overtones of sake or mirin wine, which I feel is a critical component to good teriyaki flavor, but I do get a noticeable level of garlic in lieu of the more commonly used ginger.

There's also a nice spiciness to this from the black pepper, that cuts through the sweetness and gives the overall flavor a good balance between the salty, sweet, and spicy.

I can even pick up the natural meat flavors in the chewing, which seem to have light touches of fatty, oily flavor giving it more of that "beefy" flavor.

The saltiness in this feels to be at a moderate level, or perhaps half-way between moderate and heavy.

Overall, what you're going to notice the most in this is a teriyaki sauce flavor that's more weighted towards the soy sauce and less on the sweet, and with a noticeable garlic. The black pepper generates a good deal of flavor, and you'll also get a lot of natural meat flavors too.

Meat Consistency

These are slices of whole meat, sliced thick, and in strips ranging from two to five inches in length.

This is a dry jerky with a semi-moist, slightly sticky, surface feel. These strips have some flexibility, but still feel somewhat stiff. Biting off chunks is not that hard to do, while the chewing seems easy to do.

The chewing texture starts with with a light bit of chewing resistance, but easily chews down to a soft mass. At that point, it feels just like chewing a piece of steak cooked medium.

Several of these strips have small bits and streaks of fat in them that seem to contribute to the overall flavor. I don't see any gristle or tendon, but I did get some stringiness. However, I didn't really get much of any unchewable tissues.

As for clean eating, it's somewhat. The slight bit of stickiness on the surface collects on my fingertips and brings with it some of the pepper bits.




Snack Value

Silverhawks Journey sells this Teriyaki beef jerky from its website at a price of $6.00 for a 4oz package. If you bought four packages, the shipping cost to Southern California comes to $5.00, for a total of $29.00. That works out to $1.81 per ounce.

For general jerky snacking purposes, at the $1.81 per ounce price, this seems to provide a good value. I'm getting a good deal of snackability from this for an overall good flavor, good meat consistency and good chewing texture. That price is the same as what you'll pay for major brands of jerky in grocery stores, yet this provides more snackability for the money.

As a teriyaki beef jerky, at the same $1.81 per ounce price, it's a decent value. I'm getting something that resembles teriyaki, more than just sweetened soy sauce, but missing those overtones of flavor from sake or mirin wine. But still very tasty overall.

Rating

I'm giving this a good rating.

This Teriyaki beef jerky from Silverhawks Journey offers a teriyaki flavor, but not quite the teriyaki I would expect to get from a Japanese restaurant. The sweetness is not quite as heavy, and it's missing some of those overtones of flavor you get from some of the traditional teriyaki ingredients, but still seem to generate a snackable flavor.

Yet I particularly enjoyed the natural meat flavors and the touches of fatty flavor, that combined with the teriyaki sauce, and the spicy black pepper, recreates that flavor of eating a grilled marinated steak. And it even chews like a real piece of steak.

Overall, a good well rounded flavor of sweet, salty, spicy, and saucy. I just needed the full teriyaki sauce flavor incorporating more of the sake or mirin wine, and ginger.

My recommended beer pairing for this, go with a standard pale ale, specifically the Anchor Steam, or the Widmer Drifter Pale Ale.

Rating: Good

Buy this online:

• http://www.silverhawksjourney.com/