Tong Jerky - Honey Pepper

Tong Jerky is a brand that launched in 2018 by two buddies attending college in Los Angeles. They originally discovered biltong, the South African dried meat snack. They came up with the idea of creating a beef jerky based on the biltong recipe, and Tong Jerky was born.

After several years of perfecting recipes, they finally launched the company and started selling online. Their jerky can also be found in a handful of stores across Los Angeles.

This Honey Pepper is described by the company as, "the perfect marriage between sugar and spice", going on to say that it, "starts with a smooth sweet taste and ends with a peppery hot finish".

Ingredients

Beef, teriyaki sauce, brown sugar, pineapple, worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, granulated garlic, cracked black pepper, ginger

Review

The first flavors that I identify is a light but sweet teriyaki sauce with hints of fruit. The black pepper becomes noticeable. The chewing brings on a bit more teriyaki definition, along with notes of garlic and ginger.

As for being labeled, "Honey Pepper", I don't taste any honey at all. It certainly is however, sweet. But that smooth, almost buttery character of honey, is not identifiable. The black pepper, on the other hand, stands out well. I get a lot of cracked black pepper flavor, but not necessarily freshly cracked. Moreover, it's not really the "peppery hot finish" that the company described. I still see this as "mild" on our heat scale (level 1 out 5), but I'm sure others might see as "mild medium".

Otherwise, the primary taste profile is a sweet, but light teriyaki sauce with hints fruits, well seasoned with black pepper, and notes of garlic and ginger in the background.

The meat consistency is excellent. These appear to slices of brisket, with a light level of stringiness, but chewing easily with a semi-moist feel. They take on a very meaty, steak-like texture.

Verdict

This Honey Pepper variety from Tong Jerky offers up a lot of black pepper flavor for those love that age-old, tried and true spice. But while there isn't really any honey flavor in this, there's still plenty of sweet to turn this into a nice sweet & spicy variety. Think of this more as a teriyaki style jerky boosted with black pepper, and faint touches of fruit and ginger. The semi-moist slices of beef are easy to chew and take on steak-like texture.

Rating: Good (4/5)