Wednesday, September 11, 2013

The New Primal - Just Beef Jerky

the new primal
The New Primal is a brand of meat snacks and trail mixes focused on the Paleo Diet. It's the creation of Jason Burke, based out of Charleston, SC.

As the story goes, back in 2009 Jason began a quest to eat and live a more healthy lifestyle. He picked up on the Paleo Diet and after encountering frustration finding jerky, fruits, and nuts free of preservatives and artificial ingredients, he began making his own jerky and trail mixes.

The New Primal makes jerky out of its own USDA inspected facility. They make only this one flavor, "Just Beef Jerky", their other products are trail mixes combined with jerky.

Ingredients

Beef, gluten free tamari, honey, pineapple, lemon juice, garlic powder, liquid smoke, onion powder, pepper, ginger.

Taste

The first thing I taste from the surface of these pieces is a light smokiness followed by touches of pineapple and honey.

The chewing brings in some saltiness and sweetness, some light natural meat flavors, touches of fruity flavors, and a light soy sauce.

For being marketed as "Just Beef Jerky", it has a plain, mild flavor that gives me the sense of being a no-frills, nothing-fancy, beef jerky.

The flavors that seem to define this jerky starts primarily with a light, watered-down, soy sauce flavor, but sweetened moderately from the honey and pineapple ingredients. The liquid smoke flavor has a noticeable footprint. After that, the unique flavors of pineapple, honey, and lemon make up a faintly noticeable flavoring.

The garlic, onion, pepper, and ginger ingredients are not easily discernible individually.

All the ingredients combined create a largely mild flavored jerky, low on seasonings, with a lightly noticeable soy sauce and slightly fruity character marked by the pineapple and lemon. Overall, this jerky is light on flavor, as if it's trying to be more a diet food than a meat snack.

The natural meat flavors are lightly noticeable, but still don't provide much flavor.

Meat Consistency

The are slices of whole meat, sliced into strips ranging from 3 to 8 inches in length, and sliced thin.

This is a dry jerky with a dry surface feel, but retaining a very flexible, bendable character. It's easy to bite off pieces, and generally easy to chew.

The chewing texture starts out feeling tender, with a bit of a rubbery, soft-plastic feel. After several chews, it begins to resemble something like meat, but something more tenderized, as if it were pounded. Once chewed down to a soft mass, it has a meaty character, but not quite steak-like.

I can see tiny bits of fat on these strips, though no tendon or gristle. I do encounter a lot of stringiness, as if this was cut from brisket, much of which mats down into unchewable wads.

It's very clean eating, however. My fingertips pick up no residue and I find no bits of meat or seasonings falling off.

just beef jerky

just beef jerky

Snack Value

The New Primal sells this "Just Beef Jerky" from its website as a price of $6.99 for a 2oz package. You can get a volume discount of $64.00 for a 10-pack, which would work out to $3.20 per ounce.

For general jerky snacking purposes, at the $3.20 per ounce price, it's a poor value. It's low flavor, average chewing texture, though decent meat consistency, leaves this jerky with little to enjoy, and seemingly sharing the same company with brands like with national brands like Oberto, Bridgford, and Jack Links, yet is priced far much more.

As a Paleo Diet food, its a decent value when compared to other brands in the health-food sector. It's gluten-free, preservative-free, low-sodium, low sugar, are all good qualities, yet still offers a similar snackability to other Paleo brands.

Rating

just beef jerky nutrition
I'm giving this a fair rating.

"Just Beef Jerky" from The New Primal appears to have all the characteristics of a meat snack that followers of the Paleo Diet are looking for, low sodium, gluten-free, low sugar, all natural ingredients, and no preservatives. It just doesn't offer much snacking enjoyment.

It has a rather mild flavor, a low flavor, that doesn't really grab my attention. This allows the liquid smoke to leave that tinny, metallic flavor in my mouth. The soy sauce base tasted rather light, as if it were watered down. The garlic, onion, pepper, and ginger seasonings were difficult to identify. Even the meat consistency tended to be stringy, often chewing down to mats of unchewable tissues.

But considering this product is more aimed at the health-food market, perhaps taste is not the main point here. It's still a worthy purchase if you're more concerned about losing fat and building muscle.

Rating: Fair

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