In 2013, while visiting the USA, I made an online purchase for the Oaktown Jerk brand of jerky. This review will focus on a 2 ounce/56 gram bag of their hickory smoke spicy flavor.
Oaktown Jerk, LLC makes and distributes this Oaktown Jerk brand of jerky. Not overly surprising is that Oaktown Jerk, LLC is based out of Oakland, California. They advertise their jerky as being ‘artisan’, meaning hand crafted, which would make this jerky hand sliced. The owner of Oaktown Jerk, LLC, Randall Hughes, has 25 years of experience cooking. His inspiration of making jerky comes from travels to Mexico and South East Asia.
Ingredient Review
Ingredients: All Natural Beef, Brown Sugar, Soy Sauce (Water, Soya Beans, Wheat Flour, Salt, Potassium Sorbate), Vinegar, Garlic, Habanero Chili, Liquid Hickory Smoke. Allergen Warnings: Soy, Wheat
This beef is advertised to have had free range access to forage on grass and roam about. The beef is also raised ethically, meaning free from growth hormones and additional antibiotics. To be more specific, they use the highly regarded certified piedmontese beef, which originated from northwestern Italy.
The liquid marinade is an average soy sauce, healthy vinegar, and liquid hickory smoke.
The hot flavor comes from the habanero chili pepper, which is healthy if eaten in moderation. Super healthy garlic is also used.
No nutrition facts table is provided. As a result, the exact salt and sugar levels are unknown.
This jerky does qualify to have no sodium nitrite, or any other similar unhealthy preservatives. Instead, salt is the main preservative, and vinegar to a lesser degree. There is unhealthy potassium sorbate used as a preservative in the soy sauce, although it was not designed to withstand the drying process with jerky. Admirably, this jerky also qualifies to have no MSG added.
Very Good (9/10) – Ingredient Rating
Taste Review
The strip sizes have various sizes with a medium thickness. The length of each hand sliced strip is mostly uniform in length, so that everything fits in the resealable bag. While not right or wrong, these strips are cut against the grain, instead of more commonly with the grain.
There is a strong sweetness to this flavor. The soy sauce flavor is somewhat mild. For a jerky advertised as ‘Spicy’, the habanero chili really adds some pleasant, fairly intense heat.
There is not too much hickory taste, where the hot flavor is pretty dominant. The jerky is mostly easy to chew, except one strip that was grisly, and hard to chew.
I paid $6.00 for this 2 ounce/56 gram bag, which works out to $3.00 an ounce. That rates as an expensive price. Overall, this is a good all around product, and worth the money.
Bag Review
This is an unusual and interesting bag. The bag itself is rather small, and just barely seems to fit 2 ounces/ 56 grams. In fact, if this jerky was not hand sliced into uniform sized pieces, it would probably be a challenge for the jerky to fit in this bag. On top of that, this bag is resealable, which is somewhat rare for such a small quantity of jerky.
The bag has two labels affixed to the front, and another sticker on the back with a best before date, and price. One label in the front is the company logo, which looks like the skull of a bull, which is pretty interesting actually. The second label is primarily an ingredient list.
Most bag categories are covered with this bag. There are things missing such as no nutrition facts table, no blurb about Oaktown Jerk, LLC, no slogans, and the jerky weight is not stated in grams.
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