A Short History of Jerky, and How NAKOTNE Jerky Is Made

February 28, 2026

Jerky is a modern snack built on a very old idea: take most of the water out of meat and it keeps. Here is where jerky and its name come from, and how NAKOTNE jerky is made in Latvia today.

Why people dried meat

Fresh meat spoils within days. Dry it far enough, usually with the help of salt or smoke, and the microbes that spoil it can barely grow, so it keeps for months and weighs a fraction of what it did. That made drying one of the oldest ways of preserving meat, and many cultures that hunted or herded animals developed their own version. Jerky is the one that gave today's snack its name.

From ch'arki to jerky

The word comes from the Andes. In Quechua, the main language of the Inca Empire, ch'arki means dried, salted meat. Andean herders made it from llama and alpaca meat, salted and dried in the cold, dry mountain air and strong sun until it would keep. The Inca stored ch'arki in qullqa storehouses along their roads and supplied it to travellers at waystations.

After the Spanish arrived in Peru in the 1530s, the word passed into American Spanish as charqui. English borrowed it twice: as a verb, "to jerk" meat, recorded from 1707, and as the noun "jerky", recorded from 1850.

Dried meat around the world

On the North American plains, Indigenous peoples dried thin slices of bison meat in the sun or over a slow fire, and mixed dried meat with fat (and sometimes dried berries) to make pemmican, a dense, long-keeping food that European fur traders later adopted. Settlers and travellers took to jerky as trail food because it weighed little and could be eaten without lighting a fire.

Other regions have their own traditions. Italy's bresaola and Switzerland's Bündnerfleisch are salted, air-dried beef, and South Africa has biltong, which we compare with jerky in What is beef jerky? Across northern and eastern Europe, including the Baltic countries, salt and smoke did the same job for the hams, sausages and fish that had to last through the winter.

From the trail to the shop shelf

In the 20th century jerky moved from campfires into factories. The principles stayed the same (salt, smoke and drying), but they are now carried out under controlled conditions, the meat is sealed in packs that keep out air, and EU labels must list the ingredients, highlight allergens and include a nutrition table.

How NAKOTNE jerky is made in Latvia

NAKOTNE jerky is made by SIA "Gaļas pārstrādes uzņēmums Nākotne" (Nākotne Meat Processing Company) in Nākotne, Jelgava municipality, Latvia. The producer is IFS Food certified. THE JERKY sells NAKOTNE snacks online; we do not make them ourselves. The producer's labels say a good deal about how the jerky is made.

1. Meat from the hind leg

The first ingredient of every NAKOTNE beef jerky is "beef ham (origin: EU)": meat from the upper hind leg, the part traditionally used for jerky. Pork Jerky Original is made from pork loin (origin: EU).

2. Cured and seasoned

Salt and the preservative sodium nitrite cure the meat, as they do in ham and bacon. The seasoning depends on the flavour: dextrose, sugar, spices and black pepper in the Original; soy sauce (which contains wheat), garlic and ginger in the Teriyaki; tomato powder and smoke flavouring in the Barbeque; spices and garlic in the Jalapeño. In the Teriyaki, Barbeque and Jalapeño, sugar is the second ingredient after the beef.

3. Hot-smoked and dried

The pouches describe the product as a dried, hot-smoked meat snack. Hot smoking, unlike cold smoking, cooks the meat as it takes on smoke, and drying removes most of the water. That is why it takes 210 g of beef to make 100 g of Beef Jerky Original, and 153 g for the Teriyaki, Barbeque and Jalapeño. Pork Jerky Original takes 250 g of pork per 100 g.

4. Sealed in 35 g pouches

Each 35 g portion is sealed in its own pouch with an oxygen absorber sachet, which is not edible, and eight pouches go into each box. Unopened pouches keep without a fridge, at +2 to +25 °C, until the best-before date printed on the pack, usually 12 to 24 months from production for jerky. Once a pouch is open, eat it within 72 hours. If the temperature changes, a little white salt can appear on the surface; the label says this is acceptable.

Old methods, clear numbers

The basic methods behind NAKOTNE jerky are the ones people have relied on for centuries: meat, salt, smoke and drying. What has changed is the information on the pack. Beef Jerky Original, for example, is high in protein, with 41.6 g of protein per 100 g, or about 14.6 g in one 35 g pouch, and every pouch carries the full ingredients list, allergen information and nutrition table.