How to make your own Biltong/Cured Meat as known around the world

Growing up in the sunny, beautiful country called South-Africa, I wouldn’t take a second guess as how it is made. It was always available, at every shop and even big biltong shops. At every street corner. Arriving on New Zealand shores more than 4 years ago, something that we took for granted so easily, learning that biltong on the other side of the world is anything but cheap. Not even affordable, and only fall under the items of being a “luxury”. Right before we left, I fell in love with bacon biltong.

We soon learned that buying biltong in Auckland goes for between $60 to $70/kg. Yeah, you are just as shocked as I am. We barely ate biltong here in our 4 years of living here, my lips didn’t even touched bacon biltong until a few weeks ago.

So my husbands birthday came up, and I thought why don’t we start making our own biltong, we would save alot and eat it too. It’s a win win. I first needed to find a biltong maker. If you can’t find one in your area or region or country, simply build one out of wood or any other material, add fans in and racks to put hooks on that can hang with pieces of meat with it.

The perfect starter kit with the biltong maker I find on this wonderful website:

Mellerware Create your own – Experimental biltong kit – (NEW STOCK arrived)

I remember my dad always making biltong too, but was not at that stadium part in the process. My dad enjoyed making it alot.

You will need:

4 Pieces of Good, Thick Rump Steak about 1Kg of Rump Steak

We used these spices and sauces:

In a container add in your pieces of steak, on each side springle about 30ml of brown sugar, Hunter’s Biltong together with worcestershire sauce and a little bit of vinegar. Do this on both sides. Marinate now for 24 hours in the fridge. I accidently forgot to take it out and end up marinating it for 27 hours.

After marinating place on hooks and place into your biltong maker and let it dry out for 3 – 4 days. The steaks will go dark in colour and be dry. You can dry it more or less depending how you like or prefer it. To add a little bit more of the Hunter’s Biltong spice afterwards, just add a little of kick to it.