Meat Is Meat And A Man Must..Make Biltong

On Saturday I woke up and was craving biltong. It was then that I remembered that my mother had received a gift of a "Mellerware Biltong King" biltong maker a few years back that had never been used. I believe these to be fairly scarce of late. I remember a friend of mine was hunting high and low for one and could not find it anywhere.

Lightbulb sold seperately

So a little trip down to Fruit & Veg City for some of their pieces of 'Biltong Strips' (literally strips of silverside beef) would be my first task. I managed to pick up around 1.5kg for a little over R100. The trick then was to obtain my spices. I picked up some coriander and black pepper from the local spice shop, but I was keen to do something different as well. I decided I'd do a chilli piece (with some really hot chilli powder and peppadew salt) as well as a paprika/nutmeg piece.

Spicy

After a soak in vinegar, I applied the various spice mixes and left the meat in the fridge to draw in some of the flavours (about 2 hours). I decided to spend the time watching my beloved Province beat the Sharks in the Currie Cup Final (YES PLEASE!!)

That's a lot of coriander

The Biltong King (the machine, not me) comes in pieces, so some minor assembly had to take place. Once this was up and running (checked that the lightbulb and fan were working) it was time to hang some meat.

The recipes all suggested leaving the meat to hang for 3 - 5 days to ensure that it is thoroughly dry. I'm not a big fan of wet biltong, so I bargained on sampling my goods on Thursday. I checked my handiwork daily, just to be sure everything was going according to plan.

Day 1 - Decided to make some Droë Wors too

Looking good

By Monday evening, the biltong was starting to look good. I decided by Tuesday, that it was time to sample the goods. And it was good. Ready to come out.

Not a bad haul

I'm pretty happy with the end result. The Biltong tastes good and the droë wors is not too bad either. The chilli biltong definitely needs to be cut thin and you should have a beer handy. It starts with great flavour and then, when you least expect it, the chilli klaps you. I took a sample of the regular biltong to work today and got good reviews from my colleagues. I had to show them the pictures as they didn't believe that I had made the biltong. Pretty chuffed with my first attempt at biltong making.