Bourbon barrel wood smoked jerky justified
Turkey, beef, pork—whatever your choice of jerky protein, you know it’s hard to find jerky without additives, including MSG. But we found Derby City knows how to create great flavor without any of the bad-for-you-vibes.
With over 20 years of experience in the meat industry, Derby City Jerky is a “Kentucky Proud” company located in Bourbon Country. The unique spin given to this jerky includes using aged Kentucky Bourbon barrel staves to slow smoke the jerky, which becomes tender and tasty.
This product is gluten free (made with gluten-free soy sauce). It is also Non-GMO and includes no added preservatives—so when you break open the bag, consume within three days or toss it in the fridge for longevity. However, in our experience, once opened, this jerky won’t last three hours, let alone three days. It’s that good!
We tried the turkey jerky, which is sweet, smoky and peppery. The pepper spice hits you at the end, and the flavor forces you to go back for seconds. No MSG needed to intensify flavor—the proprietary method of making this jerky is perfection. IMBHO-yes! This jerky is justifiably delicious!
We purchased our Derby Jerky from Amazon for $6.99 (2.2 oz). If you have Prime, you’re basically paying $1.00 for shipping, because on the Derby City website, each bag of jerky costs $5.99 (though shipping is likely higher than $1.00). It appears you also can get this jerky from Walmart ($6.99) and Lowe’s Home Improvement ($7.89), too.
The Derby City Jerky is not free from sugar; however, the sister company, Thrive Jerky, does create sugar-free jerky for carb conscious consumers. It is sweetened with Stevia, so perhaps worth a try. We haven’t tried Thrive Jerky, so no rating given, but perhaps we will in the future.
We did note on the Thrive Jerky site you get free shipping if you spend over $50; however, we didn’t see this noted on the Derby City Jerky site.
Since the website didn’t give us much more information than how this jerky was created, we did a little more digging and found out that Derby City Jerky LLC started in 2021 with Karen Phillips as the Managing Partner (per dun & bradstreet). LinkedIn let us know that in November 2021, Karen took over as CEO/COO of the company. A woman-led company… IMBHO yes and yes!
While the company is working its way around social media, including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, there were no YouTube videos. You know we love videos, so boo… maybe this will let Karen and Derby City Jerky know we want a video. Show us how you make this great jerky! #TheEnd
