Monday, April 30, 2012

My Rancher - Yak Jerky

my rancher jerky
My Rancher is a small country store located in Greenville, TX along the I-30, about 50 miles north-east of Dallas. In addition to selling a line of its own branded jerky, it sells fresh meats, eggs, candy, nuts and fruits, among others country-living staples.

The store, owned by Doug and Marguerite Robbins, opened up in May 2008 as an outlet for their 142-acre ranch where they raise grass-fed cattle. This Yak Jerky, along with their other exotic-meat jerky, is manufactured for My Rancher by an outside facility.

Check out this video of My Rancher's jerky offerings: http://youtu.be/mhzad1tFcp0

Ingredients

Yak meat, brown sugar, soy powder, water, salt and spices.

The package is also labeled, "Hickory Smoked".

Taste

The first thing I taste from the surface of these pieces is a light smokiness, a light sweet, some oily flavors, and a light saltiness.

The chewing flavor starts with a slightly increased saltiness. There's a light bit of natural meat flavor, and a faint touch of black pepper.

For being a yak jerky, it seems rather unremarkable. Considering that yak is a bovine animal, the same as cattle, this jerky tastes no different than beef, though it seems rather light on natural meat flavors.

Otherwise, the flavors that seem to define this jerky is more of a combination of the light smokiness, light sweet, light saltiness, and light natural meat flavors. It's a light tasting jerky overall, with no particular ingredient taking over the taste-profile.

I can detect a slight bit of soy sauce flavor towards the end of chewing.

After eating several pieces, the black pepper flavor increases intensity.

Meat Consistency

These are slices of whole meat, sliced into strips of two to four inches, and sliced thick.

This is a dry jerky with an oily surface feel. It has a light bit of flexibility, but will easily crack open with some bending. Biting off chunks seems easy enough to do, while chewing similarly easy.

The chewing texture starts out feeling stiff, but seems to break down easily with a little bit of chewing, offering little resistance. Once chewed down to a soft mass, it feel rather crumbly, like eating dry meat loaf.

I don't see any bits of fat on these strips, along with no gristle. I didn't encounter any stringiness nor anything unchewable. It's all meat.

As for clean eating, my fingers pick up a good deal of oil, requiring a wiping before touching my keyboard.

yak jerky

yak jerky
Snack Value

My Rancher sells this Yak Jerky at a price of $9.95 for a 3oz package. Shipping is a flat-rate of $5.30. If you bought six packages, the total comes to $65.00. That works out to a price of $3.61 per ounce.

As a yak jerky, at the $3.61 per ounce price, it's a fair value. I'm getting only a light flavor overall, despite a good meat consistency and a crumbly chewing texture. When you spend higher prices for exotic meat jerky as this, you want the full flavor of the meat, which this doesn't quite do, and the chewing doesn't quite feel like real meat, rather dry and crumbly instead.

Rating

I'm giving this an average rating.

This Yak Jerky from My Rancher has a light taste-profile overall, with a light natural meat flavor, and complimented with light amounts of hickory smoke, sweet, and salt. There's just a touch of black pepper mixed in.

Considering that yak is similar to cattle, the meat doesn't seem to taste much different. In fact, you might be better off just buying My Rancher's beef jerky, and saving yourself some cash, considering this yak only provides a light natural meat taste. Otherwise, this jerky doesn't really knock me out with flavor, and it's dry, crumbly chewing is not much to sing about.

But overall, it's not bad. It just seems like it could do much better by improving the flavor and chewing.

My recommended beer pairing, go with a brown ale such as the Moose Drool, or the Newcastle Brown.

Rating: Average

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