I thought I would throw my wight behind the biltong thing. I regularly make my own and everybody in my househgold and a lot of kiwis around me are starting to lovbe the stuff. It is brilliant for you bushcrafters/trampers out there as a good protein and salt source on long trips.
Anyway, here's a recipe and below the recipe I will show you my dryer.
The basic idea is that you are preserving the meat with salt, so you need between 200 and 400g of coarse salt for every 10kg of meat.
The standard recipe that I use is the following: (use the rations or make up a large batch and freeze the spices.
For 10KG meat:
200 - 400g coarse salt or Rocksalt
70 g (90ml) Brown sugar (Raw Sugar)
5 ml coarse black pepper (to taste)
50 - 80 g Crushed Whole Coriander Seeds. (It is better toasted, so sometimes people roast them in the low oven or buy ready roasted)
If you add sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) this will help prevent surface mildew/mould growing on the biltong.
10g (15ml) per 10 kg
If you add potassium nitrate (aka Nitre/Saltpetre or in the USA Niter/Saltpeter) it will act as a preservative and keep the meat nice and red. You can potentially buy it from your butcher or redbacktrading.com.au or when I was young I could buy it from a pharmacy. ( made great smoke bombs, but that is a different story...)
8g (5ml) per 10 kg meat mix
Okay so that is the basic mix.
Some people like to add chilli powder, garlic powder, smoked paprika, onion powder
Make up your spice mix and freeze it, but make sure it stays dry, then I simply use it to make small batches of biltong. To store your biltong, always keep it in a pillowcase or paper bag in the fridge or freezer. Plastic can trap humidity and humidity can help the bugs to grow.
Anyway once you have cut your meat (I always use silverside or topside - Nice and cheap), you get a tupperware container with a lid.
Sprinkle spice mix on the bottom of the container.
Place a single layer of wet biltong onto the spices
Sprinkle a very small amount of Worchester sauce AND a very small amount of Grape (or Malt) vinegar over.
Now sprinkle a generous amount of spice over the layer of wet meat.
Pack the next layer of meat, sprinkle with the liquids and spice...... repeat until you have all your meat done and close the lid.
If I use butcher bought beef, I leave it only 24 hours (and rotate the closed container every so often by placing it on it lid or back upright)
If I am using venison meat from a hunt, the animal is frequently field dressed and the hygiene standards can sometimes be a little less regulated than a commercial butcher, so for my hunted venison, I let it sit for 48 hours. The biltong is a little more salty, bit still great!
Anyways, I hope you guys try it and enjoy it!
For my drying box, I really do not like to use a heat source to help with the drying out. I simply use wind and a lot of it!
I bought an old stove extractor fan for next to nothing. People renovate their kitchens and the extractor fans have no value, so I paid $3 dollars for mine!
The good thing is that it is a centrifugal fan with very good bearings that is rated for contineous use. (I did melt a previous normal cooling fan once from leaving it on too long....). The extractor fan has speed control and really works great.
I connected it to ducting and that connects to the lid of a box full of small holes. As long as the fan runs, the bugs cannot get in because of the windflow out of the box. Inside the box are small chains to hook the biltong on (using plastic covered paper clips). The chains help prevent that the meat slide closer to each other and touch, and then you can run into problems.
Because my box is metal i just throw the whole thing into the dishwasher afterwards...
Total cost of the biltong box: $6.50
Please see the pictures below!
Cheers
