I love jerky. Some days, I would tell you it’s my favorite food. Other days, I’d say fudge is. No matter what, it’s always in my top two, though. I’ve heard people describe it as “meat candy” before which I thought was so accurate. Up until recently, I had only tried beef jerky and venison jerky. Though, I’d tried lots of brands of beef jerky as well as several varieties of homemade jerky as well. I had never came across a type I didn’t like, though some are definitely better than others.
I was recently sent six varieties of jerky from golden island jerky to check out. Their six types include Chili Lime Beef Jerky, Grilled BBQ pork jerky, hickory black pepper beef jerky, korean BBQ pork jerky, mandarin orange beef jerky and teriyaki pork jerky.
Now, as I said, I was only familiar with beef and venison jerky. If you haven’t had venison jerky, it’s not much different than beef jerky. So, pork jerky
was a new concept for me but I expected it to be fairly similar. I didn’t even know pork jerky existed until recently. I like bacon, sausage, ham and pork steak so I thought there would be a pretty good chance that I’d enjoy pork jerky as well. I was right! At first, it threw me off a bit because it’s wildly different than beef jerky. If you bite into it while thinking about beef jerky, it won’t meet your expectations. However, when I was able to erase my preconceived ideas of it being like what I had had before, I enjoyed all three versions of pork jerky. The grilled BBQ and Korean BBQ varieties are both a very slick, shiny type jerky while the teriyaki pork jerky has a really unique texture. It almost felt like it had sugar on the outside, it had a grainy feel to it. I had never had jerky with this type of texture before. While I enjoyed all three varieties, I didn’t love them nearly as much as beef jerky. So I decided to move on and try the beef varieties available from Golden Island Jerky.
By the time I went to try the Chili Lime, my boyfriend had already eaten it all. Clearly, he liked it. He said he was a bit surprised that he liked it so much because he isn’t a fan of lime flavored things.
The Hickory Black Pepper Beef Jerky was my favorite by far. It was amazing. It has a “furry” like texture that reminded me of homemade jerky and it had the perfect amount of pepper to give it a punch without being too hot to handle. It was incredibly soft. My dad and grandpa are both fans of jerky but now have false teeth, and struggle to chew a lot of beef jerky but I think they could handle this jerky with ease because it is so soft. I think it’s fair to say that it’s the softest beef jerky I’ve ever had. I can see myself regularly purchasing this variety because I really liked it. I can’t think of a single way that it could be improved .
The last variety was mandarin orange. Honestly, I expected to not like this one because I don’t like any orange-flavored things. I found it to be pretty good, though. It has its own unique texture, it’s really soft, similar to the hickory black except it’s rather moist instead of dry. It has a slight orange flavoring but it’s not super overpowering so even though I’m not a fan of orange, I liked this jerky because the jerky flavor is more powerful than the orange part.
You can purchase Golden Island jerky online. Shipping is free if your order is $25 or more. There are also some stores that carry Golden Island, you can use the store locator to see if there is a store near you that sells Golden Island.
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.
My family is obsessed with jerky! Whenever we find a new variety we always have to try it. I might have to pick up a pack or two for my husband for Father’s Day.
My husband and son love jerky. We will have to give this a try. They are always up for trying new types!