Tasting Notes: Duke’s House of Meat Beef Jerky

We’re lucky enough to have companies send us their products to try, and although we’ve gotten a few doozies, we share only the best with you guys.

If you’re the kind of person who occasionally snags a pack of jerky from the service station for a long road trip, you ought to keep moving now. There’s an art to reducing an animal to an easily chewed, tasty strip of deliciousness, and jerks know that a stale, bone dry, or sinewy piece of meat is truly an act of snacking terrorism. Which is to say, shitty jerky is shitty.

Duke’s is a brand of jerky that takes dehydrated cow slices pretty damn seriously, and you can tell by the names of the flavors…

Original Angus
Stubb’s Spicy BarBQ – Beef Brisket Strips
Frank’s RedHot Original
Frank’s RedHot Chile ‘n Lime
Jim Beam Original Hickory Smoked
Jim Beam Bourbon Glaze Steak Strips
Kikkoman Teriyaki
Black Magic Peppered

These aren’t your knock-off Slim Jim beef sticks, these are high-quality steak-house style jerkies. As you can see, the company courted the most well-known sauces and spice brands on the market to flavor their meats, and Duke’s was not afraid to share their product with us. Having tasted each every one of the eight flavors they sent, I can see why. I consider myself a jerking jerky enthusiast (expert would be pushing it too far), and I was quite impressed with the lot of them. Duke’s has taken on traditional flavors and ventured into some new territory as well, so I decided to dig through their offerings and decided I needed to bring some pals with me.

And so the Circle Jerk was born.

Composed of myself and three others (another dude and two ladies), we intrepid few dove into the plastic pouches of meat and I recorded each and every immediate reaction I heard, plus my own impressions.

The Great Consumption

Original Angus
“Really good.”

Very sweet, smokey and thickly glazed. Very tender, without being outright juicy. A fine flagship jerky for a brand to stand behind.

Teriyaki
“Good, just what you would expect from Teriyaki.”
“Yep, Teriyaki.”

Teriyaki is a pretty standard jerky flavor, and you don’t screw around with  standard. Here they’ve used Kikkoman to flavor the meat, and considering that’s likely to be the only brand of soy sauce / teriyaki you could name off hand, its sure to be a familiar flavor. This is among the chewiest, most strongly flavorful of any of the varieties.

…you don’t screw around with  standard.

Original Pepper
“Wow, this actually has some kick to it.”
“Pepper is peppery!”

This pepper brand means business. Definitely strong, and the peppercorn makes it all a bit tougher/dryer. which you would probably expect. This isn’t a flavor I tend to get excited about, but it’s clear pepper lovers will find a lot of flavor here.

Red Hot Original
“Not as hot as I expected, but distinct.”

Less strongly spicy than simply flavorful, the Red Hot jerky is not for those looking for their next taste bud scorching. If you’re one to slather all of your meals in hot sauce though, this will provide that distinct flavor. Definitely on the sweet side.

Red Hot Chili & Lime
“Ooh, that’s really good”
“Soft, and the lime is interesting to taste on jerky.”

This is one of the unexpected flavors, but it fits like a glove. The very distinct flavor is lightly glazed on the meat, but it’s impossible to miss. Jaded jerky jerks should give this one a shot.

… one of the unexpected flavors, but it fits like a glove.

Spicy BarBQ
“Smokey.”
“Not much of a bite, but definitely a good BBQ taste.”

To my discredit, I didn’t have any huge BBQ enthusiasts on hand to test, but this flavor still got a thumbs up from we tepid brisket fans. Like Teriyaki, this is a flavor that requires less innovation and more straightforward delivery.

Jim Beam Original
There weren’t a lot of exclamations over this bag, as it lacks the flavor of the others (especially in comparison to the glazes), but it’s still a well made, generally moist jerky. A bit tougher than most, but it’s hard to stand out amongst such a flavorful crowd with a more straightforward, stripped down flavor.

…it’s still a well made, generally moist jerky.

Jm Beam, Bourbon Glaze
“Very sweet, you can definitely taste the Jim Beam.”
“This tastes like my car’s being worked on.”

It may sound kind of weird, but that last one was definitely a compliment (or a bizarre sexual allusion that went over my head). The Bourbon glaze is a strong contender for most juicy and flavorful of the bunch. You can actually see the crystallized glaze when you look closely, and you definitely know when it’s in your mouth.

The General Consensus

Overall the group (me included) found this to be most satisfactory batch of beefs. Virtually every bag contained memorably chewy and moist treats, though each had enough toughness to still be considered jerky without breaking a sweat. If you like to loose a tooth when yanking apart your jerky, then maybe Duke’s isn’t for you, but otherwise let loose. There should definitely be a flavor to suit your tastes.

So next time you get a hankering to dig into a snack you can rip, tear, shred, and generally consume in the most Jurassic manner possible, I’ve got no hesitation in suggesting you give one of Duke’s offerings a shot.