Tag Archives: meat snacks

Chick n Skins

These snacks are amazing!

My wife and I have been crisping up our chicken skin into chips like this for years, ever since we found some chicken skin bag snacks in Hawaii a while back that we liked. But that brand went stale and took on a weird taste very fast. We had to throw a bunch away, unfortunately. Ultimately they were just too greasy and not packaged well.

This product, however, is a different story.

Each bag has a salt packet inside to absorb excess moisture and prevent spoilage or overly greasy “discharge.” They also seem less fatty or fried than the other brands we have tried, and less aggressive with the salt content. Also, great flavor variety! I highly recommend this snack.

Zoe’s Meats

These chubby little meat stick snacks were good!

Apparently they own or partially own Two Hot Chick’s jerky as well, which I have yet to try. I will get on that soon. But as far as Zoe’s goes, I liked the jalapeño stick the best of the three pictured here.

Aufschnitt Meats

These Aufschnitt meat bars are really good.

I tried a few flavors at a trade show and was hooked. This pineapple one is killer. If you see these, pick some up! You won’t be disappointed.

Ayoba-Yo

I’m a big fan of this biltong! Ayoba-yo packs a wallop of flavor, and I really liked the beef sticks as well as the thin sliced whole muscle. I will definitely be getting more of this stuff. I saw them at a trade show and snatched up a few samples:

Definitely worth your time!

Tomer Kosher Beef Sticks

My sister and her husband gave these to me for my birthday.

So far, I’m really digging them. I’ve tried pepper and jalapeño. They’re not greasy or waxy, like many beef sticks are. They’re also really tender. No yanking or tugging, like men often do with their hard beef sticks. These are soft. Great product!

Stryve Meat Snacks

Lately I’ve been gravitating towards biltong for my meat snacking needs, rather than jerky (which can sometimes be loaded with lots of sugars). Biltong is a meat snack that originated in Africa. Generally this stuff is seasoned and dried whole muscle meat, sliced thin.

While both biltong and jerky are high in sodium, I sweat like a shitstain with all the running and physical activity I’m engaged in, so I don’t mind that so much.

What I like about biltong in particular is that it’s shaved nice and thin, and that means it’s almost always tender and not aggressively chewy. I had some jerky recently that made my jaw muscle sore for a week after eating. Fuck that noise.

Anyway, enter Stryve brand biltong. This stuff was the cheapest and had the largest portion sizes/bags that I could find on Amazon. They also had the most interesting flavors, like spicy peri peri and hatch chili.

Both the biltong and the meat sticks from these guys are great. Meat sticks are often times greasy and overly salty. Not these. They’re perfect.

A great way to satiate snack time hunger while also delivering protein, zinc and B-vitamins.

Give this brand a try. I fucking love it. The only down side is that the bags of biltong are an absolute BITCH to re-ziplock (yup – Ziplock is a brand, and I’m diluting it with genericide so that you know what the fuck I’m talking about). But if you call yourself a man, you should probably just crush the entire bag in one sitting anyway. There’s only two servings in the size I purchased.

Righteous Felon

I had my hands on Righteous Felon jerky one other time in the past, when I tried their Halo Diablo flavor that was a collaboration with the St. Lucifer habanero spice. I remember thinking it was really good. Well, Righteous Felon sent me some more samples:

My natural proclivity is to go for the spicy shit, so I picked the habanero flavored one (different from the St. Lucifer collaboration, for sure).

It was good! The rest were all superb as well. This is a great brand. If you see it on the shelf, grab it. And if you like puns, their entire line-up of flavor names is pun after pun.

UPDATE! This company also makes some really great beef sticks.

Three Jerks

Three Jerks sent me some samples of their filet mignon jerky:

I was excited to try these out, as it seems to be quite an expensive and dedicated endeavor to take one of the animal’s most coveted cuts of steak and turn it into a dried meat snack. I was impressed.

The flavors are all quite good, but I liked this “maple bourbon churro” one the best, which is atypical since I usually like spicy flavored jerky. I definitely recommend this brand, and I look forward to trying their black truffle flavor next.

Gary West Artisan Smoked Meats

It’s National Jerky Day so I need to give you fuckers something for it. I recently got my hands on a bunch of flavors of this brand during a Certified Angus Beef tour of a meat purveyor near NYC (DeBragga).

This stuff is really good, and it reminds me of the stem portions of the “Say it with Beef” jerky rose bouquet that my wife got me for Valentine’s Day.

I highly recommend this product. Every flavor is delicious, tender and flavorful, as they are all made with CAB brand high quality meats. If you see it around, buy it all up.

Georgia Land & Cattle Jerky

This stuff was sent to me by a friend from down south.

I really loved the peppery flavor it had. Good salt levels as well. The jerky itself was cut into long skinny strips, which made it easy to handle and eat. The meat was just a little brittle and hard to chew. Not that it wasn’t tender – it was just very hard/dried. Over all I enjoyed it though.