This review is for duck magret, made by La Maison Du Gibier Inc. Magret means the cut of meat is from a breast of duck. La Maison Du Gibier translated to English means “The House of Game”. They are located in Charlesbourg, near Quebec City, Quebec, Canada.
Their web site is all in French, which makes it challenging to find information, but something like Google translate does a decent job. This business started in 1982, where they specialize in big game, small game and specialty meats. Adept at hunting, Jean-Marie Rondeau came up with the idea of raising pheasants for local restaurants. He and his wife Pierrette transported the produce. They built a meat processing plant that meets the highest government standard. Today they employ over 50 people, and since September 2011, the children John and Julie Rondeau took over the family tradition. I bought this 2 ounce / 56 gram product in 2011 at a meat store in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Ingredient Review
Ingredients: Duck, Salt, Sugar, Sodium Nitrite, Spices, Mustard, Sodium Erythorbate
The duck used in this product are raised ethically and have free range access. Ethically meaning animals that are raised without growth hormones, or additional antibiotics, one step away from being organically certified. Free range meaning animals that are allowed to roam free in their natural habitat.
Mustard is an interesting ingredient, which is actually quite healthy. The duck is maple smoked according to a traditional cold smoke recipe.
While sugar is a listed ingredient, but curiously, the nutrition facts table states that 0 grams of sugar is used. The salt level is high at 380mg of salt per 28 grams of jerky, where 350mg or less of salt is preferred.
This jerky does use unhealthy sodium nitrite as the main preservative apart from salt. However, this jerky does qualify to have no MSG added.
Good (8/10) – Ingredient Rating
Taste Review
One of my criteria to review a bag of jerky is that the word jerky should appear somewhere in the label. In fairness, nowhere on this bag does it state jerky. It does state dried, where the most basic definition of jerky is dried meat. After trying a slice of this duck, it was obvious this was not your traditional jerky. It was very thin, soft and tender, which more resembled meat that you would buy at your local meat delicatessen.
Taste wise it was alright, not knowing really what to expect, being my first time eating duck. The overall flavor was not too strong, so it’s hard to compare against any other meat I had previously tried.
This 2 ounce / 56 gram bag of duck meat cost $11.99. That works out to $6.00 an ounce, which would make it a very expensive price.
Bag Review
This is a somewhat unusual bag, where it is enclosed by a cardboard case. The plastic bag itself is nothing special. Being a product made in Canada, there are French translations for everything. Being a product made in Quebec, it would be more accurate to say translated to English.
There is an interesting picture of a duck with a glass of wine in its hand, pointing to a bottle of wine. Something you do not see often in jerky, there is an official “Gluten Free” symbol. There also appears to be an official symbol stating everything was made in the province of Quebec.
All bag categories are covered here. There is a blurb printed on the back about “Discover a taste of the land”, describing how they make their meat products.
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