Jerky: Why Is It Called Beef Jerky?

Great question! The word 'beef jerky' might sound like an odd term for a jerky product, but we promise there's nothing shocking about it.
Beef jerky, in its simplest form, is meat that has been salt-cured and had all its moisture removed. Sounds pretty simple, right?

There are a few folk theories that try to explain the origin of the name jerky. Some jerky fanatics believe the name comes from the movement (jerking) your head makes when you bite into a particularly tough piece.

While that sounds plausible, historians believe jerky is actually an ancient product. What we do know is that jerky comes from a native South American tribe called the Quechua, whose origins date back to the Inca Empire. The word "jerky" comes from this tribe and has its roots in the term "charqui", which means burnt meat (our beef jerky isn't burnt, we promise).

Native Americans preserved meat such as game, bison, cattle, deer, elk and fish by marinating it in a brine made from acidic fruit, then hanging the meat to dry near a fire or in the sun. They did this before travelling or during the winter months, when hunting was difficult and food was scarce. Jerky was especially prized during February, which Native Americans described as the "Hunger Moon" because of winter's impact on the harvest.

These meat preservation techniques were later adopted by settlers.
Cowboys too jumped on the bandwagon and started carrying salted beef and beef jerky in their pockets for times when they had no direct access to a meal. The protein kept them full through long days spent on horseback and rounding up cattle.

Folk tales claim that cowboys (or cattle hunters, as they were known at the time) kept raw beef under their saddle, and the friction of the saddle along with the heat of the sun would cook it.

It's also said that the cowboys' sweat helped flavour the meat (delicious!). We're not entirely sure how accurate this is, and we'd rather not imagine what a sweaty jerky cooked under a saddle would taste like.

Probably not very pleasant.

Beef jerky has been a popular specialty across North and South America since ancient times, and in recent years it has landed on the shores of the UK. Nowadays the jerky production process is slightly different, but our beef jerky follows a very simple method.
We use beef topside, which is cut and hand-mixed in a marinade of herbs and spices; our team then lays each slice by hand onto cooking trays before the beef is slow-cooked and smoked in a low-temperature oven.

It's still rich in protein and low in fat, just as it would be in the United States.