Biltong Cures 1, 2 & 3

Biltong 1st Try

This may be worth a bit of a try too, a different taste as its air dried rather than slow heat cooked. So apparently tastes more like prucetto rather than jerky.
This looks like a biltong drier might be an interesting project.
After cutting upI've got a glass dish with some brown malt vinegar in it, based on this video:

I bought a Beef Roast (about  900g ) and I've got it in the freezer at the moment, which will hopefully make it easier to cut into standard slices.
I soaked the steaks in brown vinegar for 3 hours after slicing long strips about 10mm wide

I've modified a box to allow me to suspend the meat, but am still thinking about the rub at the moment.
I'm using wire across the box, and to stop the hooks slipping have knotted paper clips at intervals. 

I went to the Warehouse and bought a cheap USB fan, there was a $5 fan and an $8 fan. I chose the latter as it had 3 speeds, so possibly could be more flexible.

 

For the rub recipe I didn't have any corriander seeds so used what I had in the Herb box but sort of based it on this wiki page recipe.

I used plastic paper clips to suspend the meat (because its been soaking in vinegar, metal can react with the vinegar)

 

 I found some foil flex duct that I'm using to connect the fan to the box at low level and have an old wool jersey held over the top with elastic bands around the box to allow the air to flow out of the top.
Because the fan can make a bit of a noise I'm setting it up in the utility room and closing the door.

 It needs to run for 4 days to dry out the meat.
So, all setup at the moment, I don't have a heat source in the box, and I'll see how that goes.

Process

Monday 23rd Dec. Next day after setting up. The fan cuts out a bit, I suppose for a 48 fan its not designed to run continuously, or maybe the resistance is a bit too much. I check it if i'm going past and re-set the fan if its stopped. It seems to be only running on one setting now, rather than the 3.
The room definitely smells quite vinegary. So some drying must be taking place.

Thusday, testing

 I was doing a bit of a read on storing biltong, and it said try as you go. So today I unhooked a piece of meat and sliced it, it did tasste a bit like Prosciutto or Jamon. I trimmed the fat off as I didn't like the taste of that, then re-hung it.

So I should start getting it out soon.  I weighed it, it was 398g, and the roast was 899g when I bought that (although I did cut a bit of fat off the back of it) so at least 50% water removed.

Also, a more lean cut of meat might be best. I wonder about Ham, or Pork, like the Spanish and Italians ?

So, I'll bag some and use the straw and remove the air and put it in the fridge, and some in the freezer. I'll cut the fat off first though.

Curing & Storing both Jerky & Biltong

Apparently mould can start growing after about day 5-6, epending on humidity. So that is why dry time about 4 days for Biltong, so that it doesn't start growing mould.
I put the beref jerky into bags, it was a bit moist, but I used a straw to suck out the air and left it in a cupboard. I'd done the drying on the 23rd, today the 26th and there was a bit of while on the outside of one of the bags. I think air had slowly got into the packet.
So, lesson, meat, moist, mould.
I think I should put some tissue paper in to absorb some of the moisture ( some have the salt crystal bags) and also put into the fridge.
They say the flavour changes if you put into the freezer, so I'll need to test some of the pieces doing that, to test flavour change, bith the Jerky and the Biltong.

Review

I love the taste of the Biltong, a real meat taste like Spanish or Italian cured ham, and quite chewy. I've got to make more as I'm getting through it pretty quickly.

2nd Try Beef & Pork

30th Dec 2019

This time I want to do both Beef & Pork. I'm interested to see if there is a distinctive pork flavour. I got some Rump Steak at 15.49/kg, about 1.5kg before fat trimmed off and smaller bits used for Fried rice meal. 
 Pork Shoulder at 8.99/kg with bone in and skin on. So by the time I skinned the fat off and took the bones out it was only 1.4kg (Original cost about 16.50$, so near 2kg).  I used the skin to make crackling.
I soaked in vinegar, this time steak with malt and Pork with white vinegar (I had a full litre bottle of that). I marinated both for about 3 hours in the vinegar.
Then used spices after draining off vinegar.
I set meat in spices for an hour.
Then I put the spices on. For both I used:
2 heaped Tablespoons of Brown Sugar
1 Tbspn Baking Soda
1 Tbspn Black ground pepper
1 Tbspn Pink Salt
1 Tbspn Garlic Pepper
2-3 Tbspn Chilli Flakes

After draining vinegar and adding spices I let meat sit in dishes, but the fluid leached out from the vinegar, so the spices were pretty minimal on the surface.
 Maybe a further roll in dry spices before being hung may be another option to make sure the chilli and pepper stick to the outside.
I added more lines and paperclips to the box .
Also found some muislin, so used that on the top of the box instead of the jumper (a bit more sophisticated).
So, about 1.8kg of meat airing
I thought this chaps video was pretty good. I may even have to get some corriander seeds (even though I really dislike Corriander).

 I had to go and purchase another fan as the other one didn't stay on but kept on cutting out. So I bought the $5 one from the Warehouse which is 150mm dia instead of just over 100mm Dia.  I removed the 100mm dia flex and cut the hole bigger into the box at the bottom. I also used muslin at the top. I had to tape over the wire ends holding the suspended biltong as it was catching the muslin.
A lot more open at the top compared to the jumper.

I think I'll have to clear the freezer so that I can get cheap meat when its on special to store to do batch biltong.
 This vid is good for layering spices on meat before dehydration:

So, 2nd time I had some quite thick pieces of pork, so I left it drying for 6 days. I have it out on the bench now ready to cut up and seal in bags.
I bought a vacuum sealer so that I could seal the biltong to give it a lobnger life.I still have not got a good way to keep a vacuum seal on standard ziplock bags as the seal leaks a bit.

Final Weights 5th Jan 2020

After 6 days drying there  is 614g of Beef Biltong and 643g Pork biltong. I gave a small piece of the Beef Biltong to someone before final weigh in so the Beef would have been higher.
So now I need to vacuum seal them up.
The pork looks quite pale and I need to do a few taste tests on it.
I have bought some corriander seeds to try for the next batch, and I'm also trying the curing of a pork shoulder, but that will take a month.
I have also ordered a dehydrator too, so looking forward to trying that out, with the biltong as well as the jerky processes.
I used the straw to get vacuum in bags then used heat sealer on vacuum sealer and put in fridge in vegitable drawer.

Some I sent off to Karl & Zoe to try. Zoe can't have malt vinegar as its not gluten free but white vinegar is, so the Beef isn't gluten free but the pork is. Their ones were sealed properly with the fancy bags, mine are using ziplock bags with a vacuum thermal seal above the ziplock.

Tasting 8 jan 2020

I gave Sky some beef and some pork and he enjoyed it. I then tried a THICK porrk piece, about 25mm after drying, but the middle was still quite moist, it didn't have as much taste, so a bit dissapointing.  A little bland. So thick is not good, better thinner so all the herbs penetrate more and it dries out more.

3rd Try Pork

I went to Pak'n'Save and got some pork shoulder chops on special. Total weight 1.66kg and after trimming alll the fat and bone off I was left with 1.09kg of meat for biltong.

I have this soaking in white vinegar at the moment.
I am also using the air fryer to render the fat for lard for cooking and also to get pork crackling from the skin. I've taken the crackling out to cool and then I'm going to cut the fat off so that it can render better and also only have crackling with minimal fat attached.
I got quite a lot of dripping out this time, I also leave the bones in so they can add a bit of flavour. Not sure if I should keep them for a stock. Maybe another time. Needs a bit more research, see Pork stock. This says best roasted before, so that is good. I'll keep them.

This time I want to do the soak in salt/sugar in a container in the fridge to draw out the liquid. This sits for 1 to 1 1/2 hours to dry out the meat . After use the vinegar from previous soaking to rinse off the salt.
Put somewhere to dry, maybe some old T shirts or rags (so can use again) and then while still moist add pepper, corriander seeds and chilli powder to outside and hang to dry.

I think this method may dry out the meat more quickly and also allow  for the corriander seeds, pepper and chilli to stick to the outside for the drying process. 

After 1 hour I took salt/sugar off with vinegar and squeezed the meat to get excess water out, then rolled the meat into the 3 spices and hung in the biltong box. Now to cure.
The smell is not as vinegary in the room as I only soaked the meat in the vinegar for 1 hour. I'll be interested to see what the flavour is like.

9 jan 2020

Packing today, weight 522g , so its lost half its moisture approx.
Its only a couple of days but some parts are dry. I have some quite straggly bits, so cut an end off one and it was really really salty. So maybe my rincing technique was not that good.
I'll go bAck to trying the 3 hour vinegar instead. I prefer that to the taste of salt.