I’ve noticed that most of the major brands of beef jerky are using an awful lot of sugar in their cure, sometimes it is second after beef in the ingredient list. This results in a soft, sweet jerky with little of the salty, savory flavor I like. Jack Link and Oberto are especially guilty of this.
Does anybody know of a brand that isn’t so sweet, with a more salty, peppery profile? I have made my own, but some times I just want an easy snack from a grocery or convenience store.
Trader Joe’s Biltong Jerky.
That looks good.
Damn good jerkey. It may be regional to upstate NY, but it’s really good.
That’s just messed up. Biltong isn’t jerky and that’s some of the fuggliest biltong I’ve ever seen. Biltong should be dark, rich red-brownverging on black, that shit is grey. It looks like it is covered in mould…
Slight hijack
Why is jerky so damn expensive?
/end hijack
The potato quality of the second picture leaves me unconvinced.
You are taking pounds of meat and dehydrating them to ounces. It’s going to be an expensive process because the input is expensive.
Fair enough, but the meat doesn’t have to be an expensive cut, does it?
I’d imagine you could use just about any meat and season it to taste. I remember having venison jerky a few times, and it was great. That was just some output from a deer being processed during hunting season… I have no idea what the cost was, but I would think you could use some fairly inexpensive “input” meat, that isn’t either popular as a regular dinner choice, or something like chicken or turkey as the base.
Maybe that is against the rules of “jerky”
At least for biltong, you need lean meat, because there’s no cooking to soften connective tissues and render fats. If you start with a gristly cut of meat, you end up with a rubber chew toy. The best cuts are fillet, rump or the like. Ostrich is great too, no bones. And lean cuts are not the cheap ones.
It might be different for jerky that’s smoked, although my understanding is it’s not like you’re slow-bbq-smoking brisket or anything. Also jerky is sliced first, then dried, so that might factor into which cuts you can use.
Even the cheapest cuts of beef tend to be more than $3/lb. Dehydrated to 25% of the original weight puts jerky at $12/lb. If jerky is cheaper than that per pound, it’s because they’ve added a lot of sugar and salt. (Hence the difficulty of the OP’s quest, I suspect.)
Yeah their label makes a deal out of biltong not being “jerky” … apparently biltong is cut differently and has more residual moisture (and is thus less preserved). Having no idea what biltong “should” taste like all I can say is that what they sell tastes pretty good to me. Definitely not sugary and with some peppery and umani flavor to it. Apparently backbones for biltong include coriander, salt, pepper, and vinegar. Then who knows what.
It doesn’t have to be steak, but it does need to be lean, so chuck and brisket are out. If it has high fat content, it won’t dry properly, it will taste greasy and go bad faster. Bottom round is pretty lean, and not too expensive.
I found it!
Tillamook Zero Sugar Black Pepper Beef Jerky
This stuff is the bomb! Chewy, salty, peppery with no sugar. It is the beef jerky of my youth. And I get it for $3.79 for a 2.2oz package at my supermarket, which is a lot cheaper than online sources I have seen.
Very much regional, but they mail order all over the planet.
I’ve had the same problem. All I want is meaty, peppery jerky. Aside from some truck stop jerky in the central valley years ago (you know, in a big ziplock bag with a label off a cheap inkjet), the best I’ve found is Enjoy Old Fashioned Pepperedjerky.
They don’t seem to ship out of the US.
Our local co-op sells this stuff. It’s pretty good.
