Ever since I was a little kid reading Capstick’s safari hunting books, I’ve been intrigued by biltong. And for a lotta years I’ve entertained the idea of making my own. It often takes me an absurdly long time to get around to doing things, and biltong was no exception. But I finally did it… I think.
See, I decided to make biltong without ever having eaten the stuff, so I can’t confidently declare that what I made is True Biltong. Still, it’s tasty stuff, and making it was fun.
Poking around the web for instructions/recipes, I quickly discovered that almost everyone agrees on using London broil, salt, black pepper, coriander, and apple cider vinegar. Some recipes call for brown sugar, others not so much. If the ingredients are consistent, the method varies considerably. After reading just enough recipes to thoroughly confuse myself (the man with one recipe knows exactly how to make something, the man with two is never quite sure…), I dove in.
The London broil was sliced into strips about a half-inch wide, then heavily salted on both sides with Kosher salt. The recipes called for rock salt, which I didn’t have on hand, but the substitution seems to have done no harm.
After about an hour, the strips got a dunk in apple cider vinegar, both to marinate the meat and rinse off any excess salt. I let the vinegar drip off, then rubbed on a healthy covering of ground black pepper, coriander, and (hey, why not?) a little paprika. Into a zip-lock baggie and into the fridge overnight.
The “proper” way to dry cure the meat involves hanging it in a box with some ventilation holes and a lightbulb to help drive out the moisture. This is not going to work in a house with two very resourceful little carnivores prowling around. It also takes WAY too long for me. Funny how I can wait years to actually try something, but can’t be arsed to give it two weeks of drying time, no?
Instead I laid out all the strips on a baking sheet and dropped it into an oven set for 150 degrees. It took, oh, maybe 8 hours in my not-at-all consistent oven, flipping the meat and rotating the baking sheet periodically. The result came out looking like this:
How is it? Well, it’s nomulent stuff, spicy and nicely chewy. It LOOKS like the pictures of real biltong I’ve Googled up. I’m not at all qualified to pass judgment on its authenticity, but I like it well enough that I’m going to mail-order some real biltong for comparison purposes. Maybe I should send a sample to pdb to get an expert’s opinion…
Looks OK.
I smuggled some biltong to the ‘states last time I was there. Actually, I *bought* some biltong in the FSCKing *Duty Free* and then stateside I found out it’s illegal to take the stuff anywhere so I practiced don’t ask don’t tell and all was good.
Around here we hang the stuff behind the fridge, nice and warm there. Don’t do it where there’s a high humidity, green biltong is not good.
People I know use “normal” vinegar… white or brown. Nothing fancy like apple cider. And don’t sweat the salt, dishwasher salt will to in a pinch. Sheesh, fire ash will do in a pinch, ask the Voortrekkers
Seems a nicely done bit of improvising. Keep us informed.
Well managed to stumble upon this article as i was browsing the web and to be honest it looks pretty good (on the outside lol) i actually live in south africa so yeah haha well done for a first attempt