Pemmican Beef Jerky - New Style

Pemmican Beef Jerky is now touting the words "New Style" on the top of their packages. I figured I'd buy a bag and write a review.

The New Style comes after a year since The Marfrig Group bought the Pemmican brand from ConAgra in July of 2008. The Marfrig Group is a Brazilian-based company better known in the meat snack industry as the parent company of Mirab USA, the largest beef jerky private labeler. Mirab makes jerky for hundreds of brands, mostly retail stores.

The New Style is actually the same style and recipe that Mirab already makes for their private label customers. Since they're already geared up to make this specific formulation, switching Pemmican over eliminates the costs of continuing the old recipe while acquiring the thousands of distribution channels that ConAgra had already established.

The old ConAgra style and recipe looked like cuts of steak, but was somewhat oily to the touch, and quite soft to the point of being mushy. Read my older review of Pemmican's Teriyaki Jerky to find out what it used to be like.

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Pemmican Beef Jerky - Teriyaki

Pemmican is one of the top selling brands of beef jerky in the United States, manufactured by Con Agra Foods.

But "pemmican" is also an Native American term that identifies a type of food that resembles beef jerky. This food is not quite the same as beef jerky, but similar. Pemmican is pounded "beef meal" that is mixed together with other ingredients.

In that sense, the Pemmican brand of beef jerky might be similar to the original pemmican, because it has a similar consistency.

Ingredients

Beef, sugar, water, soy sauce, salt, less than 2% of monosodium glutamate, wine, vinegar, flavoring, brown sugar, succinic acid, maltodextrin, corn syrup solids, sodium nitrite, lemon juice solids, soy lecithin.

Taste

Being that this is a teriyaki variety, I expected to get a good taste of teriyaki, but I don't find a lot. I do indeed taste some teriyaki, just not a great deal.

Most of what I taste is a something of a meaty taste, but it doesn't taste much like actual steak. If anything it has something of a "old meat" taste, or a "rank taste" to it. I'm thinking its the tenderization process that gives it this strange taste.

There is a lot of salt taste in this, in fact that's what I probably end up tasting the most. I can also sense a bit of the soy sauce, but as an aftertaste.

Overall, this jerky has an "ok" taste. It's not a great taste, or even a good taste, it's just enough to pass muster.

Meat Consistency

These appear to be made from real cuts of beef muscle, sliced in medium to thick thickness, and in small pieces.

These pieces are very soft, in fact that's what strikes me the most with this sample of Pemmican, it's very tender. It's not necessarily moist, though some pieces are moist, it's just soft.

I also find this to be somewhat oily to the touch, but not too much that it requires cleaning. But I do find myself rubbing my fingers together to remove what layer of oil that got picked up.

I can see a fair amount of gristle in these pieces, but the tenderization process appears to have removed the toughness of the gristle. I do find a fair amount of fat.






Product Value

I paid $4.99 for this 3.65 ounce bag at a Stater Bros market in Menifee, CA. That works out to $1.38 per ounce, putting this in the average price range.

Probably the only value I'm finding in this is the high level of tenderness in these pieces. Otherwise, I don't consider this to provide a great beef jerky experience due to its high salt taste, somewhat strange meat flavor, and oily consistency. As a teriyaki variety, it doesn't even provide much teriyaki taste.

Rating

I'm giving this a "fair" rating.

Just eating this, you get a quick sense of mediocrity from the strange meat taste and oily consistency. If all you need is a protein fix, maybe this will do, but then again, why bother with this when there are so many other better tasting brands?

The high level of salt is always turn off for me, and the fact that as a teriyaki variety it doesn't taste much like teriyaki. But it's still "acceptable" enough that I'd eat it, and not toss it to the dogs.

Rating: Fair

Buy this online:

• Amazon.com


• eBay.com

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