Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Settlers Jerky - Honey Teriyaki Beef

settlers jerky
Next up in the series on Settlers Jerky is this Honey Teriyaki variety. See my previous review of their Hickory Beef.

Settlers Jerky is a brand of BeefJerky.com, an online retailer of beef jerky, launched by Gregory Nemitz in 1995. Nemitz began making jerky for family and friends several years before he launched his business. In addition to beef jerky, Nemitz sells salmon jerky and trout jerky.

The Settlers brand includes this Honey Teriyaki, the Hickory Beef, as well as a Ring of Fire, and a "Final Frontier", which is a black peppered jerky that actually went into orbit on the International Space Station.


Ingredients

Beef, brown sugar, teriyaki sauce, honey, corn syrup solids, pineapple juice, vinegar, ginger, granulated garlic, sodium nitrite, liquid smoke.

Taste

The first thing I taste from the surface of these pieces is a lot of sweet with a light bit of salitness mixed in. There's a faint touch of vinegar noticeable.

The chewing flavor starts with a light burst of ginger and a light soy sauce flavor.

For being dubbed, "Honey Teriyaki", it seems to hold up well. I don't taste the natural flavor of honey, it's more of the heavier sweetness that I get. But I do get a good teriyaki flavor with all the components of what I think makes up a traditional, Japanese style teriyaki.

Otherwise, the flavors that seem to define this jerky overall, starts with the teriyaki. It's mostly composed of the sweet and soy sauce flavors, but colored by a light pungent ginger and a touch of the tangy vinegar.

I don't really pick up any natural meat flavors, which I think is masked by the heavier sweetness.

The level of saltiness in this feels to be moderate.

Overall, this jerky mostly has the flavor of teriyaki sauce, just heavier on the sweetness and soy sauce, and not much on anything else.

Meat Consistency

These are slices of whole meat, sliced medium thick, and in medium to large slabs.

This is a semi-moist jerky with a sticky, oily surface feel. These slabs are very flexible, like very soft rubber, comparable to thick plastic window stickers. Biting off chunks seems easy to do, while chewing is quite easy.

The chewing texture starts out soft and tender, but more gummy than meaty due to the heavy coating of sweet. It's chews down quite easily and quickly, and by the time its rendered into a soft mass, it feels a little mushy, though still somewhat meaty, comparable to the slices of beef you get at a chinese restaurant mixed with a heavy sweet glaze.

I can see small spots of fat on these slabs, but no streaks of gristle or tendon. I did encounter some stringiness, but overall it didn't impede much with the chewing. I also encountered a few bits of hard, impacted tissues that I could not chew.

In terms of cleaning eating, my fingertips pick up light bits of sticky, enough to require a licking and wiping before touching the keyboard.

honey teriyaki jerky
teriyaki beef jerky
Snack Value

BeefJerky.com sells this Settlers Brand of Honey Teriyaki Beef at a price of $19.18 for an 8oz package. Shipping is free. They'll also discount that price if you buy two or more packages. Two packages works out to a price of $1.91 per ounce.

For general jerky snacking purposes, at the $1.91 per ounce price, it's a decent value. I'm getting a good overall flavor, good meat consistency, though a fair chewing texture. That price is comparable to what the major brands of jerky are selling in stores, yet this seems to have a little bit better snackability overall.

As for a Honey Teriyaki beef jerky, at the same $1.91 price per ounce, it's a good value. I'm finding a pretty good teriyaki flavor, comparable to what I would expect to get in a Japanese restaurant, and better than what I'd get from the major brand of jerky.

Rating

I'm giving this an average rating.

This Honey Teriyaki Beef from Settlers Jerky offers up a good teriyaki flavor, within the realm of true teriyaki in the Japanese sense, in that I get all four of the primary teriyaki components of sweet, soy sauce, pungent (ginger), and tangy (vinegar).

While I found the meat consistency overall to be good, mostly meaty with just a little bit of stringiness, the chewing texture felt rather gummy and mushy, which I think was exacerbated by the heavy sweetness.

I also didn't get any natural meat flavors from this jerky, leaving it mostly to the teriyaki sauce to do all the work. And even though it's a good teriyaki sauce, I've encountered many other jerky brands with good teriyaki sauce. That combined with the gummy chewing texture, tends to pull it back down to the middle of the pack.

My recommended beer pairing for this, try a fruity wheat beer, like the Wailua Wheat from Kona Brewing, or the Leinenkugel Hefeweizen.

Rating: Average

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