Chicago firefighter Bernie Volk makes Firehouse jerky with a controlled smoking technique. Could anyone know more about smoke than a fireman? We reckon not.

Photo Credit: DCaptain’s Place

The guys at Firehouse asked us to taste their beef sticks. We said yeah, because … beards. We at miLam didn’t grow our beards as fashion statements. Ours are functional. We know guys who hunt and fish and ride snowmobiles. We know guys who fix cars. We may spend a lot of time manning the kitchen, but we stacked six cords of firewood last fall, wearing flannel shirts that are older than most college kids. We know stuff about jerky that goes beyond what you can learn in a 7-11.

However, we’re not jerky aficionados, because, dude, if you’re going to aficionado something, don’t you think it ought to be X-Men comics, or vinyl records – or whiskey? Long story short: we’re not exactly jerky officers in the beef stick army. We’re just guys in bars who’ve had a couple of beers and hey, you want some jerky? Hell yeah! We think we are probably the perfect demographic.

Some Research

About Jerky:

miLam is staffed in part by errant college professors, so we forced some poor graduate student to do all our grunt work …  applied for a grant and … did a bit of preliminary research.

• We found this article by Steve P. Johnson to be informative. We are confident that this guy knows his shit, because he mentions “tri-tip,” and no one knows about tri-tip except cowboys, and a real-life cowboy once befriended Jeff the Chef and hipped him to some tri-tip on the grill, and damn!
• Firehouse Jerky is made with 100% US Beef. It also contains stuff like dextrose, caramel color, monosodium glutamate, cellulose gum, malic acid, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, silicon dioxide, tricalcium phosphate, and sodium nitrites. Many of those things are fancy words for natural, harmless substances. About ⅓ of them are red flags – but they are the red flags you ignore every time you eat stuff like bacon, baked goods, beer, chocolate-flavored products, colas, corned beef, crackers, fried restaurant foods, ham, hot dogs, icing, lunch meat, microwave popcorn, pre-cooked meats, smoked fish, soy and Worcestershire sauces, and stick margarine. Yes, you probably recognize that as your daily diet, or, if you’re like me, your usual Friday lunch. Except stick margarine. Seriously?

• You know they know what they’re talking about at Men’s Health. They say, about jerky:

“Why you think it’s bad: It’s unhealthy meat that’s loaded with preservatives. Why it’s not: Beef jerky is high in protein and doesn’t raise your level of insulin—a hormone that signals your body to store fat. That makes it an ideal between-meals snack, especially when you’re trying to lose weight.”

About Firehouse:

Three things that strike us up front as cool:

1. It’s run by a Chicago firefighter and his firefighting buds.
2. They support Burn Camp and Widows & Children. We’re hard pressed to imagine worthier or nobler causes, and it’s cool to know that, by supporting Firehouse, we’re supporting those charities.
3. They make their jerky available for online fundraisers.

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See Also:

Continue Reading: Firehouse Jerky, Part 2 The Results: Jerky Party →

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