The Taste Bud: Righteous Felon Jerky Lives Up to its Cool Name
Righteous Felon. Yes, that’s definitely a cool name for a product. Could be a whiskey. A comic book character. But it also works really well for a product line of beef jerky. But does the jerky itself live up to the name?
Yep.
And while the brand is relentless, promoting products with characters that have goofy names — sometimes with celebrity-themed puns — the company sources its meat from family farms in America. West Chester, Penn.-based Righteous Felon trots out characters like Truffle-O Bill and Victorious B.I.G., but perhaps the three best names (at least so far) are Teriyaki Balboa, Fowl Capone and Maryland Monroe (groan). But the makers of Righteous Felon, which was founded in 2011 by a group of friends, do a fine job following through on the themes. Fowl Capone, for instance, is turkey jerky, whereas most of the products are beef.
And the brand also does a good job of varying flavor profiles, offering a couple of spicy items for people like me but sticking closer to an audience that just wants good, consistent flavor.
But one of the attributes Righteous Felon hit me with is the consistency in texture. You’ve had the stringy truck stop jerky, no doubt, and maybe your cousin Virgil makes jerky for the summer family get-togethers that you can’t even saw your way through. But Righteous Felon craft jerky has a tender, approachable consistency that hits almost without fail. Chewy and meaty, yes, but not stringy or dry.
I tried a number of different flavors, along with some of the company’s snappy beef sticks, and only a small handful of bites came with any sort of unpleasant fight-back. And all of the jerkies have a consistent smoky quality that comes with some molasses-like sweetness. The flavor variants are mostly subtle.
I’d say my favorite product, as a chile-head, was the Fiery Habanero beef stick, which doesn’t hold back on the habanero heat and the burn. Savory meat with tropical heat is my thing — I seriously need a case of the stuff.
The Seoul Korean BBQ meanwhile has a wonderful sesame infusion to go with that sweet and smoky quality all these jerkies possess. Its cousin, Sweet Barbecue, has the added bonus of including habanero and serrano pepper, which adds a sneaky kick to sweet rich flavor profile.
As for the celebrity pun jerkies, Maryland Monroe has light Chesapeake seafood spices to go with the basic brand flavor. I also at least imagined that I tasted a hint of Worcestershire. Teriyaki Balboa offers just a tad of the promised teriyaki that balanced nicely with the base flavor, while Truffle-O Bill offered very little truffle flavor that I could glean — a good thing, to my palate — but is that pineapple I tasted? Very tasty.
The jerky version of the Spicy Habanero — Habanero Escobar — was tasty, and I ate it in one sitting, although I did wish there had been more habanero heat and flavor. Still, it was tender and consistent with the rest of the product line.
The only product I didn’t care for was the Street Taco pork stick, which to me simply missed the mark in terms of flavor. There was too much emphasis on the pineapple for my taste buds. But my dog Atticus was happy to finish it off for me.
All in all, I do believe I will order more of those Spicy Habanero beef sticks — and the Righteous Felon products are reasonably priced given the quality. They will make your taste buds as happy as it made mine. And maybe even offer a chuckle thanks to the puns.
