I just bought a little beef jerky. Haven’t had any in quite a while. It was supposed to be spicy. What I got was something sweet, rubbery and gummy, with barely a hint of heat. (In the US) W.t.f.
When I was a kid, jerky was dry AF, thin, salty, tooth-rippingly tough sometimes, never sweet unless you specifically got a teryaki flavor or something. If you wanted spicy, it was covered in pepper and your mouth would be on fire after just a couple pieces. It was awesome.
Now it’s sugary and chewy. Why people gotta put sugar on everything? Can’t find that dry, thin, peppery stuff anywhere.
What food of yours has disappeared or been wrecked in order to appeal to more people?
Is anything still the same as it once was? Corporately produced food is designed by food chemists to be maximally profitable and shifts recipes regularly. Most smaller food makers/preparers are downstream from those corporate entities, relying on them for ingredients. Even the base ingredients, like produce, are being bred to be more profitable, so they change too, just slower. The only thing that won’t have changed is things like ‘that fruit tree that mom has growing by her window.’
You might want to check if there’s someplace nearby that sells biltong. There’s a local butcher shop in my area that makes and sells it and it’s like the jerky you describe from when you were a kid.
Cookie dough ice cream, without chocolate chips. Maybe it was a limited time thing, but I remember having this at an ice cream shop similar to Baskin Robbins in my youth. It was just plain vanilla ice cream with cookie dough in it and neither part had chocolate chips.
I get that I’m likely one of very few people this would have sold to. But, I really do wish I could have this again.
I’ve never heard of that or had that, but it sounds absolutely perfect to me. Maybe there are dozens of us.
IMO ice cream in general has really gone downhill. The flavors are all worse and more artificial, the ice cream is lucky to have any real “ice cream” in it anymore, and it’s all areated or “fluffed” with air to reduce the actual amount in the carton.
We kinda laughed at some ice cream one of our kids had left partly unfinished and it melted. Well, sorta. The liquid (whatever it was) drained out of the remaining ice cream and we were left with this lump of rubbery foam sitting in a pool of whatever.
Probably one of the last decent ice creams that can be bought in a normal (not tiny Ben and Jerry’s or other botique priced grocery store ice creams) container is Costco’s Kirkland brand Vanilla.
We used to get Trickling Springs Creamery ice cream from a local farm store. And it was really good ice cream. But, they had some problems and shut down. I’m not sure what they did to make the ice cream so good, but I’ve not found anything since which compared.
Ice cream nerd here!
Start by looking for “super premium ice cream” on the label. Super premium is a category of ice cream that will be 14-18% butterfat and no more than 50% air by volume (this amount is called overrun in ice cream manufacturing).
You also want to check ingredients as with all foods - real cream, milk and sugar, high fat content, high calorie content. Fat and calories = good ice cream.
Finally, pick the dang thing up. Is it heavy and dense? That’s a good sign. Is it expensive? That’s also a good sign. Good ice cream isn’t cheap and cheap “ice cream” isn’t good.
Kirkland is a super premium brand. I also like Haagen-Dazs, Turkey Hill, Ben and Jerry’s, and great regional brands like Jeni’s or Chocolate Shoppe if you have them.
This is my problem with American products. The standards are too low! Sugar is replaced with corn. The cream in ice cream is replaced with oil. Chocolate is replaced with unrelated fats. And it’s all legally allowed to be sold as what they’re a facsimile of!
At best, there are names like “chocolatey”. Bullshit.
My least favourite alternative that Nestle loves is just leaving what it is off the package. So here in Canada, it doesn’t say ice cream. It doesn’t say anything unless you look for the fine print.
But it’s in an ice cream carton sitting a metre away from real ice cream. This is false marketing by omission. If I wrote the laws, this would be illegal.
To be fair, at least currently (until the government fucks this up, too), to be legally called “ice cream”, it has to have minimum milkfat and butterfat percentages. Otherwise it has to be called “frozen dairy dessert,” or whatever.
Ice cream’s composition standards focus on dairy content, specifically minimum percentages of milkfat and total milk solids. The finished product must contain a minimum of 10% milkfat, also known as butterfat. This fat must be derived exclusively from milk; other fats are excluded, except for incidental amounts naturally present in flavorings.
The product must also contain at least 20% total milk solids, which is the combined weight of milkfat and nonfat milk solids. Nonfat milk solids, such as proteins, lactose, and minerals, must constitute at least 10% of the total weight. If a manufacturer exceeds the 10% milkfat minimum, the required nonfat milk solids percentage may be slightly reduced based on a defined inverse relationship.
The FDA allows for a reduction in these minimum percentages when bulky flavorings are added, such as fruits, nuts, or chocolate. In these cases, the milkfat content cannot fall below 8% of the finished weight, and the total milk solids must remain at or above 16%.
You’re right; I just don’t think the law goes far enough
Also make sure what you’re buying isn’t labeled “frozen dairy dessert”. That’s a product that does not legally meet the requirements of being ice cream and cannot be labeled as such.
Thanks for the pointers. I knew some of those, but the “super premium” is helpful.
Edit: just went to the store. No “super premium” available. :(
CHOCO TACOS
Mountain Dew Distortion. It was one of the ones you could vote on. It was basically the same recipe but with lime being the dominant flavor over lemon. A mild change, but I much preferred it over the original.
When/where was this available? I don’t recall seeing it.
Ecto Cooler Kool Aid.
I was looking for this one. I miss Ecto Cooler with Slimer on the packaging :(
Ecto cooler was Hi-C.
That’s how long it’s been since the stuff was around; can’t even remember the actual brand. Either that or I keep changing dimensions. What do you call the Bearenstien Bears here? Is Neslon Mandella alive or dead?
Vanilla coke. The older version tasted like proper vanilla and now it tastes just bad.
When I was a kid, I liked McDonald’s pizza happy meals (I still remember the song from the advertisements). I doubt middle-aged-adult me would like it, but I weirdly want to try it again. I’m sure there’s other stuff from the '80s and '90s, but I can’t immediately think of it.
That would be fun if you could try the actual food for real again and see if it was decent or just kid rose-colored glasses thinking it was awesome.
The only place in the USA where you can still get a McPizza is the “Epic McD’s” in Orlando Florida.
Butterfingers used to be my goto, up until they changed the recipe a few years ago to be more nutella-like. They’re horrible now.
I still remember butterfinger bb’s, would risk diabetes for a pack of those right about now
yessss old butterfingers were the best
I had one of my kid’s Butterfinger bars from their Halloween stash last Fall. It was awful. I remember that chocolate-crispy-peanut brittle flavor being so much better. Instead it was waxy sugar.
When I was a kid, jerky was dry AF, thin, salty, tooth-rippingly tough sometimes, never sweet unless you specifically got a teryaki flavor or something.
Look for local brands. I saw something like that just last year. You gotta keep it in your mouth for a while before it’s soft enough to chew. National brands aim for the lowest common denominator.
Hershey’s made a smores bar decades ago. Despite not liking Hershey’s at all, I loved that thing. Had the perfect ratio of chocolate, marshmallow, and Graham cracker, wasn’t too sweet, and it was easy to eat unlike the messy real deal. I still crave it from time to time.
I miss the frosted vanilla creme pop tarts. They were always my favorite ones. I’d toast them and put butter on them and it was just magnificent. Then they discontinued them, brought them back a few years later, and discontinued them again. I’d love to have those back.
And no, that cookies n cream abomination is not the same.
I highly recommend purchasing a dehydrator and making one’s own beef (or other) jerky. You can get a good ehyrdeator for like $100 or so. The only downside is how expensive beef is, currently. That said, you’ll still save a massive amount of money per pound, and it’s amazing.
I used to enjoy puffed corn snacks called Monster Munch. Apparently they’re British-produced and still available over there. An expat friend who goes to Gencon* every year likes to take a few packs of gherkin flavour Monster Munch to horrify his American friends.
*Maybe not this year… or ever again.
Potato skins chips. I gorged myself on them aa a kid and can’t find them easily anymore. The ones I found tasted like regular chips.
I must second the disappointment that is modern jerky. I loved how a piece used to take a long time to chew.
For me it’s been kutchup. I don’t remember it being so sweet. It used to be tangy and salty. I stopped buying and using it about two decades ago and recently tried making an old family recipe. It came out rather sweet. Definitely not how i remember. Went looking for a sugar free version of katchup and got tricked. The suger free katchup was loaded with artificial sweetener. Had to make the katchup from scratch in the end. Why is suger in everything now?
Sugar has always been in ketchup, but if you want a big improvement get ketchup with real sugar and not HFCS. Simply Heinz is my go-to.
Sounds like OP bought some BBQ or Korean-style jerky, and both of those things can be surprisingly sweet. Also, the ‘heat’ factor in food has always been on the tame side when it comes to the States (in general, anyway), so that really shouldn’t have been a surprise.
I must second the disappointment that is modern jerky.
“Modern jerky” is right. I read a comment by someone with experience (or in the industry), and my understanding is that what’s commonly sold as “jerky” in the States actually skips some important steps in the making-process. Authentic jerky is a different beast, and harder to find.
I don’t know if that’s what it is. It’s not labeled as such, however the industry could have moved in that direction without specifying that the style is what they were imitating. It’s the same jerky everywhere. Softer, chewy but not dry, often requiring refrigeration after opening. The sweetness I just attribute to people having to add sugar to damn near everything these days.
That can also be an age thing. Sweet things can taste more overly sweet as an adult, especially if you’ve been removing sweet things from other parts of your life.
Ya, looking into the history of katchup I’m inclined to agree. It likely is more an age thing.
I did find the Primal Kitchen ketchup seemed what i have been looking for. I’m going to see if i can get a bottle in the near future.
