South African Biltong

  Anyone that knows me knows that I love the back to basics practicallity of living.  I have been making beef jerky since 1992.  For nearly 10 years now I have been taking dehydrating to all new levels.  Today my cupboard is full of canning jars with dried vegatables that I dried when I determined that I would not be able to use before they would go bad.  At first, the did just sit there and make me feel smart for doing it.  But let's face it, when you see that same jar untouched for 2 years you realize that perhaps, I am supposed to do something more with these.  I have been experimenting with using these goods and have been pleasantly surprised with their taste texture and usefulness.  More about that later.  So you cannot be surfing the net in this subject without inadvertantly colliding with other drying methods.  The one that really intrigued me is South African Biltong.

  Wikipedia defines Biltong as:
Biltong is a kind of cured meat that originated in South Africa. Many different types of meat are used to produce it, ranging from beef through game meats to fillets of ostrich from commercial farms. It is typically made from raw fillets of meat cut into strips following the grain of the muscle, or flat pieces sliced across the grain. It is similar to beef jerky in that they are both spiced, dried meats, but differ in their typical ingredients, taste and production process; in particular the main difference from jerky is that Biltong does not have a sweet taste.
The word biltong is from the Dutch bil ("rump") and tong ("strip" or "tongue").^[1]

Oncethe beef is sprayed with vinegar, (my choice is apple cider vinegar) it is sprinkled with coarse salt, cracked pepper, and freshly cracked corriander seeds.  It then sits in the fridge overnight and then is hung in a dry area to dry out for 3 to 7 days.  At this time of year, I can just hang it from the kitchen ceiling as shown in these photos.  Once spring comes and the heat doesn't run so much and the humidity raises, hanging like this will no longer be practical.  There can also be no flies around this meat while hanging for obvious reasons.  To be able to still make the biltong then, it can be done on a dehydrator.  While this method is not too bad, it dries the meat faster and something is lost in doing that.  There is no substitute for the slow drying process that creates this easier to chew than jerky, prosciutto like meat.  The most common way to dry biltong is in a biltong box which consists of a upright cupboard looking box that has a section on the bottom with a light bulb in the bottom, then above that is a wooden shelf that separates the bulb from the rest of the box.  Holes are drilled in the shelf to allow the light's heat to rise to the upper compartment.  This keeps the air dry.  Then the top section has holes drilled in the sides of the box to allow the heat to flow through past the meat.

 Friday night I did "repurpose" and old HP computer case into a biltong box.  There is no lightbulb but there is a fan in the back that I hooked up to a 12V transformer.  Then I put the cover back on.  Now 2 days later our biltong is drying away in an enclosed box.  I have heard it said that if you have biltong, you need to eat it under a heavy wool balnket with a flashlight so that no one else knows you have it since it would be instantly gone.  I have also heard that if you have any left over you made it wrong.  This is all ironic, since cured, dried meat is a way of preserving meat for long term storage.  All of this was proved true with my kids when once my boys got a taste for this. Next thing I knew they were standing on stools trying to pull the strips down from the ceiling.