Food Gold: You're A Jerk

Posted on Oct 12th, 2010 in Food Gold by Mr. Goldbar

Catchdini and Young Elz collab for this week’s Food Gold, a special office taste test edition.

When I saw that FG friend Mike Davis (who you may know from his DJing as Mike 2600 or his design work, both solo or as part of the Life Sucks Die and Burlesque crews) was expanding his midwest empire to include a line of homemade beef jerky called Cool Jerk, I knew it had to be featured in Food Gold. So I hit our culinary editor Elliot Aronow and put together a chew crew to investigate.

The backstory on this meat is: Mike’s fiancee’s aunt was cooking up batches of homemade jerky herself (based on traditional Southeast Asian recipes) for family get-togethers. It was such a hit that Mr + Mrs 2600 decided to package up her deliciousness to share with the world at large, and Cool Jerk was born. There are a number of flavors available for vacuum sealed delivery from Minnesota; we checked out the original, lemongrass, and spicy varieties.

This jerky is quality vittles; as Elliot noted, you can see the “grain” of the meat. Slim Jim it ain’t. We were extremely pleased by the texture (or “mouth feel” if you fancy huh): chewy, but not aggressively so. The meat melts while eating, and the sesame seeds and marinade offer sweet notes throughout.

In fact, the original recipe is such perfectly put-together jerky that the more subtle lemongrass flavor paled somewhat in comparison, as did the spicy version that took a while to kick in – they’re not bad in any way, just not as immediately addictive as the OG, which is pocket gourmet gold. Apparently there’s also an “Native Lao Hot” batch on the website we haven’t sampled yet, but it looks very promising. Order some now for your next party / gathering / road trip / etc.