Slim Jim Monster Zesty Garlic Beef Sticks Review

Slim Jim Monster Zesty Garlic Beef Sticks have appeared quite recently in the meaty snack food market. Not only do I embrace the larger 1.94-ounce size, but the garlic flavor in this beef stick hints of Italian leanings. While like all Slim Jim smoked sticks, this is a highly seasoned and processed beef product, this garlic-flavored meat snack effectively quenches hunger during that painfully long afternoon portion of the work day. It’s a great evening food to nibble on too, when it’s too early for bed, but too late to eat heavy foods that move out of the stomach too slowly.

Pros, Benefits, Advantages, and Features

I’ve often thought of Slim Jim meat products as beef pepperoni sticks, because they taste a lot like pepperoni. This zesty garlic is no exception. In fact, the garlic taste is strong enough to lend a slightly pizza flavor to this food. Garlic, while not overly strong, very much dominates in this snack recipe.
Pieces of this garlic snack stick in the teeth far less frequently than beef jerky.
The Slim Jim form of salt-preserved beef never requires refrigeration. So it keeps several months in your food locker.
The best-if-used-by date falls roughly three months out from the purchase date. But they’ll stay fresh and pleasant-tasting for even longer than that if kept cool.
This bigger size of this Monster Zesty Garlic Slim Jim is terrific, and definitely satisfies the appetite after eating just one.
These longer sticks, measuring in at close to a foot long, taste a lot like the original-sized ones, although there may be small differences. Perhaps this is due to the amount of meat you can get in one bite of the Monster (three eights of an inch roughly) diameter beef treats.
I’ve never gotten bored with the Slim Jim Zesty Garlic flavor, no doubt because it tastes much like the original Slim Jims with a slanted, garlic twist, and as a result, brings all that goodness with it into this new flavor.
Kids appreciate these snack treats, which entices parents to like them too, since they have far less added sugar than candy bars or other sweet items.
The oozing spicy juice you get when you bite certain parts of the stick is a delightful and sensational, unique Slim Jim feature.
This snack is fairly easy to find, though it’s not nearly as popular as Slim Jim Original. But given enough time on the grocery store shelf, and my prediction is that it will be.
There are no bone stones in this snack on which to break a filling. They do a decent job of removing that unwanted stuff from the beef during manufacture.
Zesty Garlic Slim Jims have a pleasant yet subtle aroma that mirrors the actual taste closely. So smelling these sticks of meat can flood the mouth with water, as the smell portends of the gratifying experience to soon come to the mouth. The level of garlic used seems about right. It’s not overpowering enough to cover the original smoked beef flavor of Slim Jims. Yet it’s strong enough to be instantly recognized as the feature taste in this particular snack.

Cons, Disadvantages, Concerns, and Problems

25 grams of fat per serving, and 10 of those grams come from saturated fat. Two of those grams is trans fat. So indeed, the Nutrition Facts label on the wrapper paints a pretty doleful picture of Slim Jim beef sticks as a healthful food. These Zesty Garlic sticks appear no healthier than the originals.
This Slim Jim snack has more trans fat in it per ounce than any other flavor of Slim Jim I’ve reviewed.
As noted, this is a highly processed, and highly preserved snack food with a large list of food additives which to me, are undesirable, including dextrose, salt, corn syrup, and sodium nitrite.
It’s also rich in sodium at 560 milligrams per serving, and 300 calories to boot.
Though the sodium total in this flavor of Slim Jim is 300 MG or so lower than some of the other monster flavors I’ve reviewed (nice), these numbers nonetheless, still limit this product a once-in-a-blue-moon treat at my place, though its deliciously satisfying yet addictive beef and garlic flavor might suck you into eating it more often.
A nearly $3 cost for 1.94 ounces of garlic-seasoned meat, seems a little steep, especially since you can get over double the weight in king-sized Milky Way candy bars for a similar cost. But admittedly in some ways, this meat snack is probably more nutritious than a Milky Way bar.

Product Rating

I’d suggest that you try this snack. I’d rate this snack at 90 out of 100. It tastes great, and they did not go overboard with the garlic.

Where To Buy Slim Jim Monster Zesty Garlic Beef Sticks

Look for this product in bigger convenience stores, and in larger food retail centers and wholesale clubs. They come in a yellow and orange wrapper with the white backing and black and white text. There’s also a light orange rectangle near the top with “Zesty Garlic” in dark green letters. Enjoy.

References

Revision History

2015-01-15: Added whitespace, fixed typos, repositioned advertisements, and rearranged category and tag assignments.
2012-04-25: Originally published.