*I was sent a complimentary Carnivore Club box for review. All opinions are my own.

When I first heard of the idea of subscription boxes, I thought it would be a fun way to experience new products. I’ve tried a few of them, and while I enjoyed being surprised by the items included, I didn’t feel like testing or trying each of the products was an experience in itself. I thought Carnivore Club would be the same, but I was interested in giving it a try because I am always up for testing out new foods that I might enjoy.

Carnivore Club is a subscription box that includes rare meats. Sometimes this means they include meats from animals that most people haven’t tried, and other times it’s just meats from common animals that are processed in unique ways, and/or that use unique cuts of the meat or are seasoned in a new way. I thought this type of box would be great for men like my dad who are big meat eaters. Each box includes 4-6 meats as well as a small booklet that explains what each type of meat in your box is, how it is processed and suggestions for how to cook or serve it.

When our Carnivore Club subscription box arrived, I was really excited to see what was included, but the experience of testing out each of the meats proved even more exciting. It really felt like an experience in a box.

Our box had five meats. Cacciatore Dry Sausage, Prosciutto, Pancetta, Sopressata Schiacciata Salami & Salametto Rustico. All of these products come from pigs, which I was a bit sad about at first. I thought it would be neat to try meat that was from an animal that I hadn’t tried before. However, after we started trying the products in our box my disappointment quickly went away.

We tried the Salametto Rustico first. This comes in a roll so that you can cut off round pieces. The pamphlet suggested trying it with aged cheese or crusty bread. I wasn’t so sure about this based on its smell, but I wound up enjoying it. We didn’t have those around so we just tried it with some cheap crackers and it was really, really good. It had a wonderful texture to it. It was incredibly smooth – no ‘airy’ parts or un-chewable ‘seedy’ parts like the snack sausages that I’ve bought before in stores. I found myself chewing slowly so that I could really take in all of the different flavors and seasonings that the sausage had to offer. We both loved this sausage, so we were off to a great start.

Later we tried the Cacciator Dry Sausage. This also came in a roll for slicing as a snack sausage but was thinner around and had more of a reddish tint to it. It also had more of a marbled appearance. This sausage was a little bit more subtle than the other one was, but was still full of flavor, with a noticeable spice to it. I still found myself wanting to savor each bite. It’s suggested to try this on toasted bread and/or with beer. We just used the same crackers that we had used before and found it to be delightful. This was my favorite of the sausages that we got from Carnivore Club.

The prosciutto has coloring that reminds me of bacon, but was cut incredibly thin. It was suggested to eat this on toasted bread but neither of us were brave enough to eat it that way, so I pan cooked it. After being lightly fried, it got a bit crispy and tasted like ham. This was probably our least favorite from the box, but this is probably because we didn’t eat it as suggested.

The pancetta is also bacon-ish looking in coloring. We pan cooked this and it tasted like a combination between ham and bacon. We enjoyed this one but it didn’t stand out as particularly special for us.

The last meat that we tried was the Sopressata Schiacciata Salami. This is very thin, deep red, marbled looking cuts of meat that are VERY thin. They almost look like an incredibly thin, stretched out pepperoni in coloring and texture. We tried this as-is and the chillies in it were very noticeable, and kind of overpowered the rest of the flavorings. We weren’t a big fan of it that way, so we decided to fry this. The first one that I tried, I cooked too long and it got really crispy and tasted like a burnt pepperoni. So I tried again, this time only cooking it lightly. I handed it to Ryan to try, and his exact words “This is like bacon except SO.much.better!”. He was so excited about this meat – he had me look it up to see if it were available to buy. To say that he loved this meat is a complete understatement, this is his favorite meat of all time.

Finding a new favorite meat made this experience so fun and exciting. We couldn’t have enjoyed the experience more. Even though we only really liked 3 out of the 5 meats, the entire experience was fun and felt well worth the $50 that the box is valued at. Instead of just getting to try to discover new meats, we got to spend a few days trying new things and just having a fun time doing so. While I was right that a Carnivore Club subscription box would be a great gift for meat lovers like my dad, it’s also great for people like Ryan who like and enjoy some meats but aren’t massive carnivores.

I’ll definitely be keeping Carnivore Club in mind for father’s day and other gift giving occasions. The boxes are usually $50 each but if you use the code emilyreviewscc you’ll save $10, making your box $40.

You can connect with Carnivore Club on Twitter and Facebook.

Do you have someone in your life who would enjoy this meat-tasting adventure?

Emily

Hi there! I am Emily Evert, the owner of Emily Reviews. I am 28 and live in a small town in Michigan with my boyfriend Ryan and our two pugs. I have a large family and I adore my nieces and nephews. I love reading memoirs, and learning about child development and psychology. I love watching The Game of Thrones, Teen Mom, Sister Wives and Veep. I like listening to Jason Isbell, John Prine, and other alt-country or Americana music. I created Emily Reviews as a creative outlet to share my life and the products that I love with others.

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