Monday, 10 December 2012

I'm making Biltong

Hi dearest darlings,

I am back. Had a few issues, blah blah winge winge.

But I am here and this is a little tutorial for people who may or may not want to make their own biltong. Now for those  of you who do not know biltong is a snack made of hung and dried beef strips popular in Africa and South Africa. My Mum was born and partly raised in Zambia which is as south of Africa as you can get without being in South Africa. She used to make it out there, they tend to just hang beef in sheds out there but here the air is too damp and it would just mould.

So in this fabulous country we use a box designed to make biltong in, it looks like this;



 It's basically a box with polls across it. There are small holes in the lid and then a fan and lightbulb that can be seen there to plug in. The fan and light are needed for heat and air flow as the beef needs t dry out.

You then have spices that you use to flavour the meet;

And then you need hooks to hang the meat on;


The way you make it is, a bit of vinegar and the spices rubbed into the meat and left to marinate for at least 4 hours, we usually do it over night.




Then when that's done, hook through the top of the strip and hang it. It shouldn't touch the bottom and the pieces should be spaced apart so they don't touch.

It's then a case of waiting. Hang it in the box, turn the fan and light on and leave. Small thin strips take about 36 hours but the big strips take between 3 days and 5 days to fully dry out.


 Depending on taste you can eat it when ever as beef is edible 'rare', we tend to eat it mostly dry so there may be a bit of pink/red on the very inside but it's mostly dry and chewy.

I planned on taking a picture of it completely done but it didn't last that long and was consumed. So yea, that's making biltong.

 I would blog more about my cooking but my macaroons aren't very good at the moment and most things are common so if I do another random type food thing I will definitely blog it.

I will blog again soon providing that Dragon age and world of Warcraft don't eat up my time. There are new clog (my video blog) episodes up. There are more to follow, one on Castle and one on Zombie stuff.

Promise I will try to update more often but not doing anything means I rarely have interesting things to tell you.

Goodbye for now my loves.
xxx

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