Kevin Cole says he was something of a kitchen mad scientist in the past.
His family had a 25-foot pit smoker and cooked whole hogs and goats for events such as family reunions, he said. “We wanted to make our own beef jerky, and 28 years ago I got together with my cousin Kendrick and my late Uncle Ricky, and e came up with a recipe.”
Although everyone loved the recipe, neither the ingredients nor the proportions were standardized. It wasn’t until December 2020 that Barnesville-based GA Jerk was born, after the company that Cole was working for folded, and a friend said he was sure his employees at Snap-on would buy Cole’s jerky and even sell it for him off their trucks.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
He had to scale up production quickly and standardize his jerky recipe. “My uncle loved the outdoors and cooking, and he got us started,” Cole said. “He taught us how to put a marinade together and we would add a pinch of this and a little bit of that. We’d use whatever hot sauces I had in the house ... just adding stuff until it tasted right. When I realized I’d have to make a consistent product, a lot of the whimsical add-ins had to go.”
To make jerky on the scale that the company would need, Cole started using a friend’s Southern Pride smoker, which could roast up to 300 pounds at a time. “We went from cooking on a concrete and firebrick pit smoker to a rotisserie smoker, using local hickory,” he said.
It turned out that a mix-up in a beef order made the biggest difference in the jerky that Cole made.
“I ordered top round, but instead I got 20 pounds of eye of round, and I had to work with it,” he said. “I was not thrilled, especially because the difference in the cut of beef made a difference in the texture. The resulting jerky was tender, not chewy like you expect jerky to be.”
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
But when he gave some to his mother, who shared it with some of her work colleagues, “they went nuts for it,” Cole said, “and then we tested it with the Snap-on guys, and they all loved it.”
Cole started selling the jerky at festivals held in Hiawassee at the Georgia Mountain Fair, and he built a smokehouse. After a year of construction and four months of testing and validation, his company got its U.S. Department of Agriculture certification, allowing its products to be sold.
GA Jerk is a team of four: Cole, Sara Moyer, Dane Rowlett and Reggie Holden. They process 50 pounds of beef at a time in the kitchen. “We receive 150 to 200 pounds of meat on Wednesday,” Cole said, “slice and marinate it on Friday, then cook in 50-pound batches Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, depending on how much we’re making. We chop it into pieces, bag it up and then chill it. All that is done by hand. Then it starts again with the next order of beef.”
The jerky comes in original and spicy flavors, but Cole is working on teriyaki, gluten-free and sugar-free versions that he hopes will be approved by the USDA before the end of the year.
Cole’s beef jerky is sold in six states and he participated in the Georgia Grown exhibit at Atlanta’s January wholesale gift market, so he’s expecting orders to come in from 18 new wholesale accounts as far away as Oklahoma and Minnesota. And the GA Jerk booth still can be found at festivals almost every weekend.
GA Jerk. 339 Unionville Road, Barnesville. 478-993-5674, gajerk.com
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