Mike's Jerky - Garlic Salt

Mike's Jerky recently released some new flavors, and graciously sent samples to us for review. See all of our previous reviews of Mike's Jerky.

This Garlic Salt beef jerky is stamped with, "A bag a day helps to keep the vampires away".

Mike's Jerky is a brand of Old World Beef Company based out of Albuquerque, NM. The company was started by Mike and Brenda Grier in 2008. The couple had been making jerky for many years and were always told that they ought to go into business selling it, except they were already busy running an RV dealership. But when the bad economy hit, their dealership went out of business, and that cleared the way for them to start Old World Beef Company.

Ingredients

Beef, salt, garlic, modified food starch, sugar, parsley, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, garlic oil, contains no MSG.

Taste

The first thing I taste from the surface of these pieces is a faint saltiness.

The chewing brings in a light natural meat flavor and an increased saltiness. There's a touch of garlic noticeable.

For being marketed as "Garlic Salt", it seems to hold up. I get a garlic salt flavor from this, with just enough garlic to make it noticeable. Otherwise, the salt seems to come out more than the garlic.

Otherwise, the flavors that seem to define this jerky the most is a combination of the garlic salt and the natural meat flavors. Probably the salt is the most noticeable component.

The natural meat flavors are like that of roast beef, the sliced kind you get at a deli counter. It's a fresh, clean flavor.

The level of saltiness in this feels moderate.

Overall, it's a mild tasting jerky with barely any spiciness, aside from the light garlic.

Meat Consistency

These are slices of whole meat, sliced very thin, and in small to medium sized slabs.

This is a dry jerky, with a dry surface feel. It's mostly brittle, though it still has some small degree of flexibility. But for the most part, it's crunchy. It's very easy to break pieces off, and very easy to chew.

The chewing texture starts out feeling dry and brittle with no chewing resistance. I get a good deal of crunch chewing a piece down, and its chews down to a soft mass very quickly with little effort. At that point it feels very much like a piece of roast beef deli cut, but a little more dry.

I can see several spots of fat on these slabs, but they offer no additional flavor and no additional chewing texture. I see no streaks of gristle or tendon, encountered no stringiness, and no unchewable tissues.

In terms of clean eating, these seem very clean. My fingers picked up no residue, though snapping off pieces dropped just minimal amounts of meat fragments and seasoning.

Snack Value

Mike's Jerky sells this Garlic Salt variety from its website at a price of $15.00 for a 6oz package. If you bought 4 packages, the shipping works out to $6.95 if sent to Southern California. That comes to $2.79 per ounce.

For general jerky snacking purposes, at the $2.79 per ounce price, it's a decent value. I'm getting a fair amount of snackability for an overall satisfying flavor, good meat consistency, and good chewing texture. Compared to other brands of jerky, the price is slightly higher, and it seems to offer a comparable flavor, but a better overall chewing experience.

As a Garlic Salt beef jerky, at the same $2.79 per ounce price, it's a fair value. I can pick up the garlic salt seasoning, but the salt seems to come through more than the garlic.

Rating

I'm giving this a good rating.

This Garlic Salt beef jerky from Mike's Jerky offers a simple flavor of garlic salt seasoning and the natural flavor of beef.

And it's really the natural meat flavors that become the showcase of this jerky, emphasizing the clean, fresh flavor of roast beef, like the kind you get from a deli counter. The garlic salt adds a little bit of flavor to make it interesting, a little more weighted on the salt than the garlic.

The meat consistency and chewing texture are not to be overlooked. The thinly sliced, dry nature of this jerky creates a nice crunchiness, but still chews down to feel like real meat.

Rating: Good

Buy this online:

• http://www.oldworldjerky.com/