GatewayRedbirds.com

Lon Adams, who created the modern recipe for Slim Jim beef jerky and helped keep it a closely guarded secret, died on Saturday in a hospital in Raleigh, N.C. Mr. Adams was 95...

Ron Doggett, then the chief executive of Goodmark Foods, told the magazine, “You can beat the heck out of them, carrying them in your pocket.”

His children recalled Mr. Adams’s bringing home boxes of Slim Jims with flavors that were still in development.

“They went through barbecue flavor and Italian seasoning and pizza flavor and lots of different ones that never made it to market,” Ms. Harrington said. “I did not like them. I think it was all the testing I had to do as a kid.”

BottenFieldofDreams wrote: ↑

December 4 20, 4:11 pm

that stuff tastes like it was created in a beaker and regurgitated into your mouth by a mother bird with reflux issues.

“Slim Jims begin as 60-pound frozen blocks of sliced meat labeled ‘beef head meat,’ which originates on the foreheads and cheeks of cattle,” The Times Magazine wrote after being given a “one-time peek” inside a factory in Garner, N.C. The meat is mixed with chicken, 30 spices and “lactic acid ‘starter’ culture” before being “squirted into long collagen casings,” the magazine reported.

The mixture is incubated for 17 hours at 85 degrees, giving it a distinctive “bite.” The sausages, in 7,600-foot coils, are then wheeled into smoker ovens and cooked for 20 hours, their flavor augmented using an aerosol form of liquid smoke.