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.