Venison Biltong and Jerky

[Wapiti]

Just wondering if any of the hunters here have made their own Biltong or jerky?
And what spices and recipes you use?
I'm keen to try other flavours, maybe how you do it too.
Drying times, whether you use a dehydrator or just hang in dry air, whatever.

Here's our latest effort, we do both. I must admit I like the Biltong, our end result seems easier to stay soft and doesn't break any teeth.
Biltong is on the left and middle, up to 12mm thick. Vacuum sealed because of the issue that it still has a bit of moisture that will see it go mouldy faster if exposed to oxygen. Stuff on the right is jerky, lightly flavoured with soy sauce, great for dog treats also (no pepper of chili).

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Closeup of how it's just slightly pink in the middle, absolutely soft and fantastically tasty.

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The jerky, no spice on this lot.

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I get that this isn't something many people do, but made from clean, wild, well fed deer it's so nutritious, bugger all fat to cut off as it goes rancid and doesn't have any cancerous preservatives and nitrides and other things you can't pronounce. Easy to make too.
Good venison, from well fed animals that are not rutting or struggling for good feed, is the same as beef eye fillet I reckon.
Who knows, someone here might have some great tips for us.

[bigrich]

well i can't offer any tips , but i love biltong AND jerky . your right about jerky being harder to eat . i lot most of my back teeth years ago due to stress when i was running the floor in a sheet metal shop. stress had me grinding my back teeth that bad in my sleep i destroyed them. i still eat jerky and steak , but very slowly

[JDM9691]

Looks bloody amazing! Nice job.

We have a few dryers and this time of the year they are flat out drying fruit, but I did do some jerky recently and it's come up pretty good.
No deer around here, so I've been making mine from roo legs, which works really well because there is hardly any fat - it just gets a quick trim to get rid of any sinewy stuff around the muscle groups.

The recipe I used for 1kg of meat was 120ml soy sauce, 60ml worcestershire sauce, 2 TBSP brown sugar, 1 TSP onion powder, 1 TSP garlic powder, 1 TSP black pepper, 1 TSP smoked paprika, 1 tsp chili powder, 1/2 tsp bicarb soda. It also said 2 tbsp liquid smoke and 2 tsp salt, but I didn't have the smoke and I thought the first batch had enough salt in it from the soy sauce.

The first batch I cut across the grain about 4mm thick, marinaded in a ziplock back overnight, then laid the strips on a big wooden block between 2 sheets of baking paper and pounded them with a mallet to tenderize and get them uniform thickness.

I've been using what I now call the "mushroom dryer" (sunbeam). To many flies here to think about drying them in the sun! 1.5kg of meat fills 6 trays nicely. I just laid them on the racks, turned them over and rotated the racks after 4 hrs, then another 4hrs, which came out pretty good apart from 3 pieces that i cut more like steaks. The latest batch I must have cut a bit thinner, and after 8 hrs (at 70C) it was pretty dry. I set it going and went to work, so it pays to keep a bit of an eye on it. I don't mind it dry, as it keeps better, and is fine on the teeth as long as it's cut thin. Tastes great though. The batch I did yesterday started at 1.5 kg, plus the marinade, and I ended up with 470g, so it should keep pretty well!

I'm also keen to try a few different recipes and methods. I did see one guy saying instead of drying on racks, to skewer them and hang the skewers from a rack up the top. Would save turning them over. The last batch I cut while it was mostly frozen, and got a more consistent thickness, which I think is the key to consistent drying.

Latest batch with the block and mallet I used to flatten them.

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[Wapiti]

Thanks JDM, that's a great help. Keen to try those great flavours, going to head to town and collect some more flavours. I reckon that's they key to it what you've mentioned, lean red meat and the spices/sauce mix.
The box-section hammer is a clever idea.

My wife has commandeered the dryer we have and the last batch was 30 degrees on dry... went on for 72hrs from memory. Was a trial, wanted to get it mostly dried but still moist and not hard. Damn dentists are busy enough already.
Did a mega batch of semi-dried tomatoes from the vege patch, came out so concentrated in flavour, incredible.
With a nice gin at the end of the day, wow.

On the roos, we tried big black Wallaroos because they were kicking the crap out of our fences when fighting each other, so they had to be removed and we thought rather than feed the damn wild pigs we'd try jerky. That breed smells so bad when drying, they ended up as dog training treats instead. man, it was rank. I bled them well too. Old cockies used to call them and the wallabies "stinkies" because of how they smelt when cooking (and eating) during the hard times.
But we are about to try today, a big Eastern grey because his meat looked and smelt great when doing the cuts. We'll see, I'll find out today.
We have unlimited deer, so long as we look after them, so that meat has been the go-to.
Fallow seem to be the absolute sweetest meat.
Only thing I won't do is take a rutting buck, they run themselves ragged, are full of testosterone and skinny as bugger and just do not eat at that time, then winter hits and the feed is under-nutritious and they don't recover until the fresh summer feed is available, and even then it takes half the season.
The rut frenzy is only about corner cutting in all aspects including hunter ability.
A spiker has the best sweetest meat, as do a young doe, but depends if you want to keep deer around to breed for the future.

Also I'm going to try some beef roasts, I got a couple of pretty big ones from Woolies (yeah, the devil), for $12.50kg that looks terribly lean if the outer fat coat is trimmed. I'll see. I have aged them for 3 weeks in the cold room so hopefully that has softened the meat considerably, age seems to really benefit the finished biltong.

Rich, that's a cack, the teeth grinding story... managing people can be incredibly rewarding when you get the good ones but not so good when you don't and you never know till you give 'em a go... a resume doesn't reveal their hidden personalities hey.

[Badknots]

Ive used greedy ferrets online recipie, and my south african friends commercial spice mix for biltong. it takes a bit to balance the salt and vinegar. I built a biltong box to dry with a fan and oven light. It works really well. I have also done venison ham quite a bit as individual leg muscle groups and injecting the muscle with brine as well as immersing it.

[Damo300]

Very timely.
I only do Jerky.

I chop the meat to about 5mm thick strips and soak in Worcestershire, 4 cloves fresh chopped garlic, teaspoon of brown sugar, paprika salt and pepper, for 48hrs.
Normally about 1kg of meat, or there abouts.

Lay on screens and let go for 10hrs @ 55deg.

I've found that basting the meat again at the 4hr mark gives good results, makes it sticky. This research is based off the amount of time it lasts in the cupboard, and the fact my daughter won't eat the venison cooked normally, but scoffs the Jerky.
Baste with sweet chilli, Worcestershire, or I found a new one last week, Lancashire relish.
Baste each level with different flavour, then mix em all up when done... Haha

[JDM9691]

We ran sheep and ate nothing but mutton for most of my life, so I'm pretty familiar with killing and butchering, and experience agrees with you that young fully grown animals are ideal. Older animals are tougher eating, and while older males yield well, they are usually very tough so a fair bit of them used to get minced. I guess none of that is a problem if you're going to be slicing it into jerky though. For most other things choosing the right cut for the right cooking method is important.

I think a key to how the meat tastes and smells is the feed they've been on. With game you don't get the option, but with sheep we keep them off feed for a day or so before, and avoid animals that have been in paddocks that have strong feed in them, like melons which are bitter, or other weeds that have strong tastes. Summer weeds in particular have evolved to have horrible tastes to keep the animals from eating them, but if there is nothing else around, that's what they eat.
.

As for ageing, we'd always let things hang overnight to cool down, but didn't have a cool room so it just got broken down and put in the freezer the next morning. I'm not that patient, and my first batch of jerky was being enjoyed 24 hours after it was shot Great idea if you have the facilities though.

Temperature wise I think 30C is a bit light on. If you thought there might be anything in/on the meat that needed sterilizing, 30C is more likely to breed stuff than kill it. The manuals on our dryers reccomend 50-55 for fruits and 65-70 for meats, but I guess it's all related to the time. I've done some food safety training, and the 'danger zone' for meats is 5-60 C, where bacteria multiply rapidly, and you are meant to avoid this area if you can.

Like you Damo, there isn't much danger of the jerky going 'out of date' at my place. A bag of it disappears pretty quick when my kids are around too!

[Wapiti]

Roo jerky before starting.
This was done at 85 degrees for a couple of hours, I was busy on something else so it was done before I got back in.
We also do chicken breast in slices, it has to be cured over 83 degrees C to knock off any of the bugs that live within the meat and make it unsuitable for storage long-term.

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How it came out. This is jerky, without any spices or seasoning, it's for dog training. But there's no reason with something flavoursome to marinate it in for a person treat either.
The eastern grey roo did have a slightly different smell when curing than venison/beef, but not anything nasty, unlike the wallaby and wallaroo that stunk like the devil had just appeared.

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Who knows, there might be a time coming that we'll have to take this further and do it without electricity and fridges, to keep meat from spoiling till it's eaten...

[JDM9691]

Looks pretty good! You've got some nice consistent slices there

Who knows, there might be a time coming that we'll have to take this further and do it without electricity and fridges, to keep meat from spoiling till it's eaten...

My mum used to spend most of the summer drying fruit in the sun. She put the trays onto old doors, which sat on three legged tressle stands with each leg in a tin can of water to keep the ants out, and each door had sides so that a thin cloth could be put on top to keep the flies out. Most times it took several days to dry anything and you had to take everything under cover each night to stop the dew from undoing the whole day's drying effort, then set it all up again the next day. The good old days . I feel like I'm cheating by using an electric dehydrator

[Wapiti]

Yes, how much most of us don't know or appreciate that our oldies did...

I was watching a bloke called Clay Hayes in the states on YouTube, he's just gotta be the most genuine unshowman-like wealth of info on this topic, making biltong and jerky using the breeze and stick frames as a dryer. Unreal great stuff to watch, he's a genuine tough outdoors hunter and a wealth of knowledge on skinning, dressing and using deer, Elk and moose etc.
It was his great explanations of how and why that got us all enthused here.
One day we mightn't be able to use a fancy dryer... so best Lear to do it beforehand!

[Flyonline]

Clay Hayes is a legend, I've been watching his hunting stuff for years before he became 'famous' for winning Alone US.

I've done Sambar jerky a few times, but I have to admit that it is a bit of work to get all the silver skin/sinew off so I'm tempted to make some snack sticks now I have a decent grinder. Always good to have a few vac packs of snacks in the pack/car/lunchbox for those times you need a bit extra or forget your lunch Personally I try to make mine to taste, then add the hot stuff after its dried in Cayenne pepper or chilli flakes so I can do it small batches for something different. Nothing like ruining a batch with too much spicy stuff

This summer I did a heap of fruit leather and apricot halves, and found they dried quicker and more evenly placed on trays on the dash of the car in the sun than the dehydrator.

[Wapiti]

Yes! My wife made these flat "cakes" from super-lean beef mince with spices, scored them in long lines and they came out unreal.
You can break off long sticks, and because they are made from mince they are not hard on your teeth if you dry them too long.

Kind of like those "Schmackos" for dogs, but for people, with no cancerous additives and preservatives. Tastes unreal.
Especially now that it's common knowledge that grains and cereals are not really good human food, and that protein from meat and animal fats are in fact what we evolved to eat.
These dryers unlock a whole new world of excellent food choices and ideas, years ago I never would've thought of it.
I must watch more from this Clay Hayes. It just might be something that pays to learn especially when/if the internet suddenly is no more one day.

[Wapiti]

Here's some of the lean mince Biltong. I call it Biltong cos it's soft.
Venison or grey roo works great because it's so lean. You don't need a fancy mincer, I bet you could find a hand-crank one at a flea market for peanuts. If you grind your own mince, you absolutely can control the no-fat rule.
Before you dry it, at very low temp for 72hrs, you score lines in it just so you have some kind of "portion control".
Otherwise you'll eat the lot. man, it's good.

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[JDM9691]

That stuff looks great! What sort of spice mix do you put in it? I have an old hand cranked mincer that would be ideal. My son cut a couple thin roo steaks off one of the legs I was using for jerky, and even I though it was pretty tough. It's super lean though, so trying to whip up some of your mince biltong might be just the shot.