hi.
i wasn't sure where to put this but i figured the only ones who might want to hear this warning are the ones crossing the border to come to quetico.
if any of you have thought to pick up the famous beef jerky at rydens border store to take on your trip.....don't.
my wife loves that stuff and has bought it before to have at our house. but we recently bought a bag with the plan of brinbing a bunch into the bush. cost me about $28 cdn and it was all bad / moldy in about a week.
i am certainly no expert on jerky but isn't the whole point to have meat that lasts ? lol
when we called the store to let them know, they said "it needs to be kept refrigerated". whaaaat ??!!

So you decided to publicly bad mouth a business because of your own stupidity?
Rydens jerky is pretty good stuff. I would never expect homemade jerky to last more than a week in that situation. If you want the jerky to last longer you could vacuum seal each days supply in a separate bag.

I disagree. My brother makes outstanding jerky. He made some around the 7th of July for our trip on the 10th. It was vacuum sealed when we left, and I just pulled out a couple pieces from a bag that was opened no later than 7/15 and it’s perfectly fine. I don’t expect large producers to be as fussy, but I would think they could make it a week or more.

Fritty

Laker Taker: "So you decided to publicly bad mouth a business because of your own stupidity. Rydens jerky is pretty good stuff. I would never expect homemade jerky to last more than a week in that situation. If you want the jerky to last longer you could vacuum seal each days supply in a separate bag."

sorry, but i did not consider my post to be "bad mouthing" the business. i am not a jerfky fan but even i thought it was good. and as i stated in the post, my wife loves it.

i fully admit to not being any kind of expert on jerkyor any other dried foods, but my limited understanding of the process of making any dried meat (or any food i assume) is to remove the moisture / fat to prevent it from spoiling. is that not the whole point? i have heard of people who dry fish for example and it lasts for months with no packing or refrigeration.

the intention of the post was to hopefully prevent someone else from making our "stupid" mistake. if you buy it, just do not expect it to last long.

you may be correct that vac packing it in small portions may prolong its shelf life. i wouldn't know.

The commercial jerky seems to last a long time, like a year or more based on best buy dates. In addition, they don’t go bad quickly after opening the package. I just checked the label on some Aldi brand jerky and didn’t find any preservatives like sodium nitrite. There was added salt. So, why the big difference in shelf life?

Update: I did see an oxygen absorber in the package.

Laker Taker: "So you decided to publicly bad mouth a business because of your own stupidity?
Rydens jerky is pretty good stuff. I would never expect homemade jerky to last more than a week in that situation. If you want the jerky to last longer you could vacuum seal each days supply in a separate bag."

Lighten up; calling someone stupid is uncalled for.