Archive for June, 2009
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
Teriyaki is perhaps one of the most popular flavors in beef jerky, and yet it’s so varied from one brand to another.
So what makes really good teriyaki beef jerky?
There’s four primary ingredients in Teriyaki, each providing a unique quality to the overall taste…
- Sweet – teriyaki should have a thick sweetness
- Soy Sauce – you should be able to taste enough of it to notice.
- Sake or Mirin Wine – provides a tangy quality, similar to vinegar
- Ginger – gives teriyaki a pungent contrast to the sweet
Most mass-market brands throw in the first two, sweet and soy sauce, and then call it teriyaki. In fact, some brands are worse than that, adding in the sugar, but relying on hydrolyzed soy protein for the soy sauce.
If you’ve ever had teriyaki beef or chicken at a japanese restaurant, you should be able to taste the same kind of sauce in teriyaki beef jerky.
I’ve tried all of the mass-market brands of teriyaki beef jerky and none of them provided that true japanese restaurant style teriyaki. Good teriyaki beef jerky is something largely relegated to the small gourmet brands.
But I have found a few brands that did a good job of replacing some ingredients with others. Some replace the ginger with onion, and still manage to create that pungent contrast quite well. Others use plain grape-based wine instead of rice wine to give it that tangy punch.
I’ve even found a brand that used a vinegar similar to that from a can of pickled red cabbage. It didn’t quite taste like traditional teriyaki sauce, it had a totally different flavor, but still had all the components of good teriyaki sauce.
Teriyaki is such a popular beef jerky flavor largely due to America’s love affair with sweet & salty snacks, and because Japanese cuisine has an exotic appeal to American snackers. Good teriyaki sauce should have an even balance between sweet and salty; neither should overpower the other.
If you found this blog post looking for some good teriyaki beef jerky, you can start with Jedidiah’s Teriyaki Beef Jerky, I gave it 4 out of 5 stars on Best Beef Jerky…
http://www.jedsjerky.com/
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