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BILTONG, GLORIOUS BILTONG The secret of SA’s favourite snack
from manmagnum_102022
by borov665
Biltong,
Glorious B Biltong
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by Gregor Woods
H u nt in g f or bi lt on g – no be tt e r p as ti me
THE WORD biltong comes from the old High Dutch word bille, today’ s Afrikaans equivalent of which is boude, meaning hindquarters or buttocks, and another Dutch word tong, meaning tongue or tongue-shaped. The parts of the animal most commonly used for biltong were the hindquarters, and the strips of raw meat resemble tongues, hence the name.
I have always been intrigued by the enigma that is biltong. I mean, when you consider what it is – raw meat that has been salted and dried until hard and tough to chew – face it, it doesn’t sound like much, does it? When I describe it to foreigners, they wrinkle their noses in disgust.
So what is it about this stuff that makes South Africans pursue it as though it holds the secret to happiness and eternal youth? Consider the insane price that it retails for – have you ever checked the weight on that little cellophane packet of sliced biltong and calculated the per-kilogram cost of it? It’ll make you wonder why biltong isn’t traded on the hard assets exchange. Yet there is not a supermarket, liquor store or corner café that doesn’t stock it. It sells.
Another thing that amazes me is the effect that biltong can have on people. I’ve known proud, hard men, who, if they lost all they had in this world, would probably face their fate stoically, never thinking to ask for your help; but let them see biltong hanging in your garage and they go all weak, smile sheepishly and plead, “Aw, give us just one stick.” I also know women who are fiercely anti-hunting, and who regard me as a cruel, depraved murderer; but when I come back from a hunting trip the first thing they say is, “So where’s the biltong?”
Nothing brings out the smiles like biltong. If I had used my brains when I was young and single I wouldn’t have wasted my time buying flowers and boxes of chocolates; I’d have gone a-courting with biltong.
Someone suggested it is a cultural thing: historical tradition and all that. It is true that biltong played an enormously
The ubiquitous Victorinox (Swiss Army) knives’ non-serrated blades are best for slicing dry biltong.
important role in South African history, and, perversely, in British history. Long before canned foods, biltong was an essential factor in enabling the Voortrekkers to trek into the unknown wilds of Africa to escape British rule. Later, during the Anglo-Boer war, the comparatively tiny Boer army, made up not of trained soldiers, but of farmers, many of them white-bearded old men and young boys with peach-fuzz on their cheeks, took on the most powerful army on earth. How did this ragtag band of Boers manage to sustain such a successful guerilla war against the might of the British Empire for so long? Bushcraft, guts, determination – and biltong.
But is biltong’s romantic history the reason for its enduring popularity? I doubt it. English-speaking South Africans (descendants of the British settlers) are just as fond of biltong as the Afrikaans-speaking descendants of the Boers. The Rhodesian settlers were mostly British, and their descendants are equally fond of biltong, as are the descendants of the German settlers of South West Africa. Is it perhaps our romantic association of biltong with the thrill of the hunt, the call of the wild, the camaraderie of the campfire? Nope. I know plenty of women who have never been anywhere where you could not plug in a hair-drier (and again, many of whom are passionately anti-hunting) who would rather eat biltong than smoked salmon and caviar. Biltong just has something about it. There is no explaining it, but if you were born and raised in southern Africa, chances are you can’t resist the stuff. Properly made, it has a unique flavour. The enigma is, why are we about
the only ones in the world who think so?
It is very much worth your while to make your own biltong, rather than to buy it. A strange fact about biltong is that, for something that is so simple to make, it can range in quality and flavour all the way from divine to disgusting, depending on the meat and method used. Once you have tasted really good biltong (and it does not require complex recipes or methods), you will realize what you are missing when you buy the commercially made stuff. Spicing has much to do with this, but let’s start with the meat.
The flavour of biltong differs according to the species of animal used. Personal tastes vary, of course, but what I look for in biltong is that certain, unique taste which only game meat can produce – it cannot be duplicated in beef. And I find that, paradoxically, the very quality that puts me off certain species for use as table meat, is what makes those species the most suitable for biltong. I am talking about gameyness.
With most foods, cooking intensifies flavours, both pleasant and unpleasant. Thus gamey tasting meat is unpleasant as cooked table fare. However, when meat dries as biltong, the gamey taste is far less evident and not at all unpleasant, somehow it becomes a tantalizing enhancement. Just a hint remains, but it must be there for your biltong to have that unique ‘wild’ flavour. And certain antelope species are more gamey tasting than others – in particular, the Alcelaphinae family which includes blesbuck, the wildebeests, hartebeests, tsessebe, etc.
In my opinion, these animals make outstanding biltong, whereas eland, for example, while being one of the very finest table meats obtainable, makes rather bland biltong. (Somehow, springbuck is an exception as it makes the finest biltong of all, and also the finest table meat. I have no explanation for this.)
For the same reason, mature male animals (of any species) are not normally palatable as table fare, but make good biltong – again, being more gamey than females or sub-adult males. Tenderness is all important, I hate biltong that is like tyre tread to chew. Several factors influence this, and I strongly advise you to read “Think Venison” in the May 1999 edition of Magnum. Though it is about venison as table meat, the discussion on the shooting, handling and ripening of the carcass applies equally to biltong meat.
Then there is the choice of cut. In terms of flavour, it doesn’t really make any difference to biltong, but in terms of tenderness and sinew content, the part of the animal you use is the most important factor of all. While on this point, let me illustrate why biltong is so appallingly expensive.
Non-hunters see an enormous kudu bull and say, “Shisslaaik, that’s a lot of biltong!” But remove its innards, skin and head, and the animal comes down to half of its live weight. Of this remaining weight, the bones alone make up 17 to 20%. Next, in terms of biltong, all that is really suitable for use are the loins and hindquarters. The neck, shoulders and flanks are just too full of sinew.
Then, woe is you, the meat itself loses between 60% and 70% of its weight (and volume) as it dries into biltong! When you finally compare the meagre rows of slender dry sticks with the memory of the massive carcass, and take into account the amount of time and work that went into the butchering and biltong-making (not to mention the price you paid for the animal, daily rates, transport, wife’s compensatory holiday, etc), it is really quite depressing. I can develop a rather sharp turn of phrase
Springbuck is an exception when it comes to quality of meat. It makes the finest biltong and is excellent table meat.
with recipients who say, “Hell, is that all I get, when you shot a whole kudu?”
Back to the loins and hind legs. The choicest biltong (most tender) comes from the loins (rugstringe). These are the long columns of meat that run along either side of the spine all the way from the tops of the hind legs to the shoulder hump. Each can be cut out in one piece, then the outer sinew must be removed (the silvery white ‘skin’ on the surface of one side). For this you need a very sharp knife and a modicum of patience.
Next, the boude. The hindquarter of a kudu or gemsbuck can appear daunting to the uninitiated, but it is really just a matter of separating each muscle from the others. The individual muscles are all naturally partitioned by layers of sinew, so just start at an obvious division and slice and pull until each comes away. It is most important to separate the muscles individually, so that when you come to slice them up into strips, you can get the grain of the meat going longitudinally.
Biltong strips must always be cut with the grain, not across it, so that when you finally cut the dried biltong into bite-sized slices, you are slicing across the grain. This is crucial to making it tender to chew.
Remove the surface sinew as you did with the loins. The thickness of the strips should depend on factors like climatic temperature and humidity (too thick and they may go rotten or mouldy) and on how dry you like your biltong. I like to eat mine when it is still soft and ruby-red in the middle, at its most flavoursome. Others like it to snap like wood on bending.
In a cold, dry climate you can cut the strips anything up to two inches thick, and hasten the drying process by blowing an electric fan on them. In Natal’s coastal climate, a fan is almost essential. But it is a good idea to vary the thickness. This way they don’t all become ready at the same time, and you can gauge the dryness of the thicker ones by eating the thinner ones as they dry.
Biltong must cure overnight before hanging, and for this you need containers made of plastic, stainless steel, enamel-plated steel, glass or glazed ceramic. Never use aluminium or copper. For fairly large quantities, a plastic baby’s bath is good. You need to make yourself a couple of shakers with fairly large perforations for the coriander and vinegar, use any glass pickle or jam jars and punch some holes in the metal lids. You’ll need metal hooks for hanging the strips. I just use paper clips opened into an S-shape.
You need facilities to hang the biltong. If you use lengths of wire for this, make these taut and supported at regular intervals (such as by attaching the strand to each roof truss in the garage). Unsupported wire sags under the weight of the meat, causing the hooks to slide towards the centre until the meat strips touch each other, which they must not do or they’ll spoil.
Alternatively, use barbed wire, which prevents sliding. Or you can make a frame with diamond mesh or chicken wire stretched across it, or any form of grid, and hang the strips from this. As far as the ingredients are concerned, personal taste, of course, rules. To me, biltong has a subtle flavour, and this must not be overpowered by strong spices which, instead of enhancing the meat, draw attention to themselves.
This article first appeared in Magnum, July 2001.
