Howdy!
We’re knawing on a bag of Krave Pineapple Orange Gourmet Beef Jerky picked up in the specialty food section of the local Spec’s.
Krave Pineapple Orange Gourmet Beef Jerky
Krave offers an exciting assortment of jerkies, each sporting unique flavors and made with minimal processing and without artificial ingredients. Their packaging conveys their love of the meat with whimsical iconography and saying. These folks clearly love this stuff! Is it as good as it looks? Let’s see what you get with this one:
Taste (B): The flavor of this jerky is great, but you might, at first, shy away from your first taste. With such bold packaging you’d be forgiven for expecting a bold flavorful punch but you won’t find anything that clumsy here. What you get instead is a mildly intense and only moderately sweet jerky with a deceptive complexity that takes a little time to come through. The first thing you taste is the citrus flavors, mostly pineapple with a supporting bit of orange. It’s a nice flavor with the fruitiness nicely enhanced with a bit of good ol’ sugar. After that already subdued flavor begins to fade you start to notice the supporting tastes so carefully woven in. You quickly detect the soy and wine flavors and they add a truly enjoyable depth to this meaty treat. If there’s room for improvement here it would be that the taste is a bit too subtle and leaves you wanting something a bit stronger. Still, it tastes good and is definitely worth the time it takes to take it all in.
Texture (B+): With a soft, almost flaky consistency, this natural-style jerky is cut across the grain and is remarkably tender. It is exceptionally easy to eat and feels great in your mouth.
Smell (B-): This jerky smells sweet with the pineapple scent being the most pronounced. It smells nice, if not particularly interesting, and does an adequate job of conveying the low-key nature of this jerky.
Appearance (A-): This jerky has a dark brown color with light yellow highlights. The pieces are natural-cut in varying sizes and provides a nice variety to your eyes. The surface of the jerky is moist yet has an almost dusty look to it, no doubt from its sugary glaze, that looks quite appetizing. It’s a handsome jerky.
Consistency (A-): The Krave folks show their stuff in the fantastic consistency of their jerky. The thickness of each piece is uniformly thin and the moisture and texture of the jerky holds true throughout. The taste, too, is expertly uniform and delivers the same great jerky experience from beginning to end.
Overall Impression (B): This jerky does a lot of things right. It’s clearly made with great skill and is a truly enjoyable treat. Still, while the flavor is genuinely pleasant, it seems a bit too understated and you may find wishing it had a bit more to offer. That said, it’s a really good jerky that offers a novel taste and a lot of character. If you spy a bag of this great jerky in your favorite fine food isle pick up a bag and give it a whirl. You’ll definitely enjoy this tasty treat. Enjoy!