Not so with Jeff’s Famous Jerky. Each variety we tried was melt-in-your-mouth tender, with exquisite flavor. When you can say jerky has exquisite flavor, you know you’ve hit the motherlode.

Jeff’s Famous Jerky, of Mission Viejo, California deserves to be famous, especially for its eye-opening bacon jerky. Bacon or beef, the meats are marinated in deep, layered marinades.

Jeff’s produces more than a dozen flavors (below).

The beef jerky has lower sodium than most brands, with no added MSG or nitrates. The bacon jerky has less sodium than pan-fried bacon.

The only caveat with jerky in general is that it’s high in sodium (don’t buy it for anyone on a salt-restricted diet).

But it’s almost fat free, and it’s solid protein: One ounce has about 23% of one’s daily value of protein. Before we continue, check out:

TRENDS IN JERKY

And America wants more of this high protein, low-fat, grab-and-go snack that’s naturally gluten-free*.

America’s consumption of meat snacks has increased by 18% over the past five years, according to recent data from The NPD Group, a market research company.

House-made jerky can be found more and more on the menus of fine casual restaurants.

[1] Oh so delicious: Jeff’s Maple Brown Sugar Jerky.

[2] Hot and sweet: Jeff’s Honey & Jalapeño Jerky (all photos © Jeff’s Famous Jerky).

[3] Jeff’s beef jerky. [4] and [5] Packages of Jeff’s Jerky.

JEFF’S FAMOUS JERKY VARIETIES

Jeff’s makes so many flavors of delicious, tender jerky that you won’t know where to start. (We suggest a build-your-own mixed box.)

The flavors are variously spicy, sweet, hot, and combinations thereof. More importantly, they are clean, clear and natural, beautifully layered to imbue the meat with complex flavors.

All are hormone-free, without added MSG or preservatives, made from American meats.

Bacon Jerky Varieties

 
Beef Jerky Varieties

 
GET YOURS NOW!

Single-flavor packages are $6.99 at JeffsFamousJerky.com. The beef packages contain 3 ounces of jerky; the bacon packages have 2 ounces.

Build-your-own variety packs offer a 20% savings; and there are gift boxes with personalized notes.

For Easter treats, tie a ribbon through the punch hole on top of the bag, and maybe add some bunny stickers.

The word jerky comes from the Quechua language of the Incas, who called their dried meat “charqui.” But they were hardly the first people to make it.

Neither were Homo sapiens, we can deduce. Homo erectus emerged 1.5 million years ago, and evidence found five years ago in a South African cave suggests Homo erectus that built campfires.

The remains of animal bones and plant ash could be dated to a million years ago. [source]

By the time Homo sapiens emerged, 195,000 years ago, man had been enjoying barbecue, and by extension jerky, for some time.

Drying food is one of the first three food preservation techniques, along with salting and, in northern climes, packing with snow in ice caves or cellars.

Meat dried over a smoky fire is protected from egg-laying insects and multiplying bacteria (they need moisture to live). Cutting it into thin strips makes it easier to chew.

All the fat is trimmed from the meat because fat doesn’t dry. The dried meat could (and can) then be stored for long periods of time without refrigeration.

While the prehistoric method of drying the meat was used by other ancient peoples, it was not known in Europe.

The first visitors to the New World found Native Americans making jerky† from the meat of any animal they hunted (that which wasn’t consumed immediately).

In addition to helping early colonists stave off starvation, later pioneers who headed west quickly learned to make jerky. It was easy to transport, and was an important, high-protein addition to their diet.

The meat for jerky could be anything from buffalo to whale. Today jerky can be found in proteins as common as turkey, tuna and salmon, to exotics such as alligator and ostrich.

Today’s jerky eaters have the luxury of enjoying it as a snack rather than a necessity. We also have the pleasure of using tender cuts of meat marinated in a variety of spices, salt and/or sugar—seasonings that were not available to most ancients jerky-makers.

Modern jerky is dried in low-heat smokers, as opposed to the ancient technique of hanging strips of meat racks to dry in the hot sun. (The campfire could hold only so much.)

If your only experience with jerky has been dry and tasteless jerky, you deserve some of the good stuff.
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*Some brands or flavors within brands may use soy sauce or other glutinous ingredient in the marinade.

†The pemmican you may have read about in tales of early America was dried meat mixed with dried berries and rendered animal fat. It was invented by Native Americans and used extensively by immigrants in the fur trade. Many years later, it served as a high-calorie food for Arctic and Antarctic explorers such as Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen.

Some people have never had a hot, runny, seductive soft-boiled egg. That’s because they’re such a pain to peel when hot, that even most restaurants don’t offer them.

Soft-boiled eggs were popular in our family. Nana had a set of vintage silver-plated egg cups; Mom had ceramic cups.

The eggs were served with “toast soldiers” (photo #2): slices of toasted bread cut into half-inch vertical strips, for dipping into the yolk. (In the photo, the soldiers are topped with lots of yummy salmon caviar.)

Soft boiled eggs have long been popular among those who could afford the egg cups: Egg cups were found in the ruins of Pompeii.

No egg cups? Small ramekins, juice glasses, and even some cocktail glasses will work. You can also nestle the egg in rock salt (photo #3) or small pebbles.

You can even make origami egg cups (photo #5). Just follow the video below or this visual from Gathering Beauty.
 
 
TAKING THE TOP OFF THE EGG

 
We are incapable of doing either of these correctly. With the spoon, we end up with fragmented pieces of shell. With the knife, the force can end up spilling yolk.

Practice makes perfect, but we found a better solution: an egg cutter, also known as an egg topper. It’s an inexpensive gadget and takes up very little room in the gadget drawer.

 
 
EASTER EGGS

Dye The Eggs: Photo #1 shows how they do it at Petrossian.

Top With Caviar: For Easter or other festive occasions, top your eggs with affordable caviar: capelin, lumpfish, salmon, tobiko, trout or whitefish roe.

For bright colors, we’re partial to salmon caviar or colored and flavored whitefish roe. (For sturgeon caviar, we waive this suggestion.)

Check out the different types of caviar and roe* in our Caviar Glossary.
 
 
FOR SCRAMBLED EGGS

If you want to fill the eggshells with scrambled eggs, you need to sterilize the insides of the shells or else (far easier) buy pasteurized eggs, such as Davidson’s Safest Choice.

Here are instructions to sterilize the shells from Rem Cooks.

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*The Difference Between Roe And Caviar

All caviar is roe, the uncooked eggs of any fish. While caviar has traditionally referred only to sturgeon roe, the roe of many (or any) fish is now commonly called caviar. In the U.S., it is legally permissible to call any roe caviar as long as the fish is identified, e.g. salmon caviar.

As food writers, we prefer to use the latter with the fish identified, even if it is sturgeon caviar. There are enough different kinds of sturgeon caviar, that even confining the word to sturgeon requires a modifier: beluga caviar, Black Sea caviar, Iranian osetra caviar, farmed white sturgeon caviar, etc.

By the way, caviar is not a Russian word, nor is it used by Russian speakers. Khaviar, meaning eggs, is of Persian origin, found in the Iranian and Turkish languages. Russian speakers use the word ikroj (pronounced EEK-ruh, with a rolle “r”) for all roe, and use a modifier (beluga, salmon) to specify which type. Habitués of sushi bars will note that the Japanese adapted this word into ikura, salmon roe.

[2] Top a boiled egg, a toast finger, a half of a baby potato (photo © Le Coq Rico | NYC [now La Rotisserie]).

[3] No egg cups? Use rock salt (photo © Sturia Caviar).

[4] Or make origami egg cups, with these instructions from Gathering Beauty (photo © Gathering Beauty).

[5] How to cut the tops from the eggs. You can get a cracker/cutter on Amazon.

There are several origami egg cup tutorials on YouTube. This one is the slowest (i.e., easiest to follow).
 
 

[2] Don’t feel like stacking? Just place the ingredients on a plate, as in this recipe. Or, layer them in a glass dish. (photo © Live Naturally Magazine).

[3] At Raymi Peruvian restaurant in New York City, a Japanese accent is added via julienned nori (dried seaweed sheets), togarashi mayo for the chicken salad, and ponzu syrup. Here’s the recipe (photo © Star Chefs).

[4] Croquettes: the chicken is inside! Check out the recipe (photo © Sweet Cakes Toronto).

[5] Here, chicken salad is turned into an appetizer with a pretzel stick (photo © Piscomar Restaurant | Madrid).

It is served chilled or at room temperature as an appetizer or as a lunch entrée.

Make the mashed potatoes with purple Peruvian potatoes (photo #6), and you’ve got a dish that screams “Easter week!”

You can substitute other salads (crab, egg, shrimp, tuna) and add other touches as you wish. We’ve included some variations below.

The name of the dish comes from the Quechua* word kausay, which means “life” or “sustenance of life.” Potatoes originated in Peru and number hundreds of cultivars. They were the sustenance of life in pre-Hispanic Peru, as rice was in China.

Morada means purple, referring to the purple potatoes. As you can see in Photo #7 below, there are also blue potatoes.

The original dish was simply boiled potatoes eaten with slices of aji amarillo (the principal Peruvian chili). Meat was scarce in the Andes Mountains. Much of the cuisine was vegetarian.

This most basic recipe of boiled potatoes illustrates today’s tip: The simplest foods can be made more flavorful and appealing, with a few twists.

The recipe below is Adina, a modern Peruvian restaurant in Portland, Oregon. Peruvian cuisine is an interesting fusion, not just of Spanish and Inca cuisines, but of Japanese cuisine, from the immigration of Japanese laborers at the turn of the [20th] century. You’ll see how Japanese touches grace some of the variations.

This recipe came to us via Potato Goodness, the recipe website of Potatoes USA, the nation’s potato marketing and research organization.

> The history of potatoes.

> The different types of potatoes.
 
 
RECIPE: CAUSA MORADA, PERUVIAN CHICKEN SALAD

Ingredients For 6 Servings

 
Preparation

1. PLACE the potatoes in a large saucepan, cover with cold salted water, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer until very tender, about 20 minutes. Let cool.

2. PEEL the potatoes and pass them through a food mill or ricer (or simply mash very finely) into a large bowl. Knead lightly with gloved‡ hands, slowly drizzling in oil, as needed, to a dough-like consistency. Add the lime juice and season to taste with salt. Refrigerate until cold and firm, about 2 hours.

3. PLACE the chicken, onion, carrot, and mint into a large saucepan, adding just enough water to cover. Bring to a slow boil. Cook until the chicken is fork tender and can be pulled apart, about 20 minutes.

4. TRANSFER the chicken to a medium bowl. Once cool enough to handle, shred with fingers or a fork. Mix in the mayonnaise, aji amarillo, celery, and red onion. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Refrigerate until cold, about 1 hour.

5a. For individual servings, layer ring molds with potato mixture, then chicken mixture, then potato mixture. Refrigerate until firm, about 2 hours.

5b: For a single dish, use a 2-quart glass casserole. Layer the ingredients, as above. Refrigerate until ready to serve; let warm to room temperature first, as desired.

Color: Purple or blue potatoes add so much more punch to Causa Morada than white varieties. As another example, how about a yellow gazpacho, using yellow tomatoes and bell peppers instead of the conventional red?

Size: Turn a full dish or side into an appetizer: Causa Morada bites (chicken salad stuffed into baby potatoes) or gazpacho shots? Or gazpacho sorbet?

Format: Change the shape and purpose, like the plated Causa Morada in photo #2, the croquettes in photo #4, and the appetizers in photo #5. Can you turn it into a drink? You can make a Caprese Cocktail by reformatting the ingredients of Caprese Salad: a mix of tomato and lettuce juices, with a garnish of mozzarella balls on a pick.

Another ingredient: The avocado in photo #1 adds new personality to the dish. What about a surf and turf variation, adding something from the sea (scallops? shrimp?).

Crunch: If the dish has no crunch, add some. Anything from a side of jicama batons or radish slices to an artisan cracker or potato plantain chip on top, will do the trick. One of our secrets: Japanese rice cracker snack mix, which is also one of our favorite things to serve with wine and cocktails.

Sweetness: Add some fruit, minced into the chicken salad, grilled as an extra layer or garnish, or pureéd into a sauce.

Salty: Blend in olives or capers, for example.

Condiments: Add chutney; cornichons or gherkins; pickled vegetables; or relish to the plate.

Vegetables: For Causa Morada, some red color cherry or grape tomatoes, or some texture a bit of frisée or arugula salad.

Sauce: There are countless types of sauces for every dish. Sweet, savory, herbal, matching, contrasting.

Bread: Could bread or crackers enhance the dish? For example, Causa Morada could be served with toasts or flatbread on which to spread the soft layers. Consider what would enhance your recipe: anything from garlic crostini (garlic bread) to sesame breadsticks to

Garnish: Garnish can change the personality of a dish. Imagine Causa Morada topped with julienned nori (photo #3), honey peanuts, diced melon, and shoestring fried onions. For fun: a few Goldfish?

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*Quechua is the language of the Incas. It is still spoken by their ancestors in the Andes Mountains.

†You can substitute other fresh chile. If you don’t want to take the time to purée the chile, just add minced pieces to the chicken salad.

[6] Purple Peruvian potatoes (photo © Pompeian Olive Oil | Facebook).

[7] Blue Peruvian potatoes are harder to find, but you can buy seeds and grow your own (photo © Harmony Farms).

[8] Aji amarillo, the chile of Peru (photo © Peru Delights).