QuarterShare Beef Sticks

QuarterShare is a new brand of meat snacks launched this year based in Tulsa, OK. It's the creation of Richard Cranford, a medical device manufacturing executive, who had built a reputation for supporting charitable causes.

Ready for a new challenge, Cranford launched QuarterShare, a beef stick brand that donates 1/4 of its profits to charities. It also donates a beef stick for every four beef sticks sold to local food pantries and after school programs.

QuarterShare comes in three flavors, Original, Smokey Sweet, and Jalapeno Pepper. They are sold in stores in the Tulsa, OK area, as a fundraising product through a wide variety of groups, and soon from their website.

Ingredients

Beef and pork, water, salt, corn syrup solids, spices, citric acid, mustard, dehydrated garlic, natural smoke flavoring, sodium nitrite.

Taste

Original: There's a well-noticed tanginess in the chewing, over a mild flavor, perhaps just lightly spiced, with a light saltiness and a meaty flavor. The meat flavor has a noticeable beef and pork blend. There's just touches of smoke flavoring.

Smokey Sweet: Definitely more sweet than the Original, it's also more mild, having none of the light spice, and little of the tanginess. The smokey flavor is still rather light, similar to the Original. The natural meat flavors are noticeable, just slightly less than the Original as well.

Jalapeno Pepper: The jalapeno flavor is immediately noticeable, particularly when eaten immediately after the other flavors. It has the tangy chewing of the Original, and much of the same natural meat flavors, saltiness, and light smokiness. It tastes very much like the Original, just with a little jalapeno flavor added. It's not really hot at all, ranking on my personal heat scale as mild-medium (level 2 out of 5).

To sum up, both the Original and Jalapeno Pepper are much similar, only separated by the additional jalapeno flavor in the latter. The Smokey Sweet is quite different, much more mild, a little more sweet, but without the tanginess and not necessarily any more smokey.

Kids will probably love the Smokey Sweet, while adults will go for the others.

Meat Consistency

These sticks are a little more moist than the major brands of sticks you find in convenience stores, yet still retain a firm, full feel, and are rather easy to eat. They're not mushy or tough, but seem to have a good balance between firmness and easy chewing.

The casing generates a little more snap compared to major brands, yet doesn't produce any unchewable or rubbery chewing.

These sticks are not at all greasy to the touch, nor all that sticky, though a fine layer film can be felt on my fingertips. Otherwise, they have a very fresh, taut, feel.

I don't encounter any hard, crunchy bits, nor any stringy, chewy material. It's very meaty.

Rating

I'm giving these beef sticks a good rating.

These three flavors of beef sticks from QuarterShare generate a lot of snackability compared to major brands of meat sticks, through a fresher, cleaner, meatier flavor, combined with a more moist, yet firm, easy chewing.

I think I like the Jalapeno Pepper flavor the best, but the Original is a close second. The Smokey Sweet didn't really have enough smokiness considering it's named "Smokey", but it certainly has the sweetness, and is actually more mild than the Original.  You won't find the Jalapeno Pepper all that hot, just some added chile flavor.

I think if you were to find these sticks at your local convenience store, you might give them a try over major labels, I think you'll get a better stick and you'll be putting money into charity instead of just stockholders.

Rating: Good

Buy this online:

• http://www.quartershare.com/