Jerky

Khannie

I'm finding myself eating more and more of this. Anyone know where can I get it for reasonable money? I know myprotein do it. Looking for alternatives (mostly in flavour, but I'd like the option of 25g packs).

gnolan

http://www.discount-supplements.co.uk/shopsearch.asp?search=jerky&btn_search.x=0&btn_search.y=0

Looked into this a while ago myself. The bonus of buying here is the free postage, so instead of buying a sh!tload from myprotein to make the postage wothwhile, you can just buy one box to see what its lie.

Seem to have a decent range of flavours - can't say i've tried any though.

beefjerky

i wish i could help, but i got out of the family business a while back...

brianthebard

You could try making it Khannie, then you can flavour it with whatever you wanted.

http://cleochatra.blogspot.com/2009/05/beef-jerky-recipes.html

cmyk

How do these compare? http://biltong.ie/biltongie_products.html

DamienH

I've tried a fair bit of jerky and biltong is by far the nicest. Don't know what the south africans do but they do it well.

Brian?

I saw it for sale in Supervalue in balbriggan last week. I'll check next time I'm and let you know.

columok

Either make it yourself or order the mixed value pack from wildwestjerky.co.uk! Incredible stuff!

Any questions on the making of it just fire away!

itsallaboutheL

brianthebard wrote: »

You could try making it Khannie, then you can flavour it with whatever you wanted.

http://cleochatra.blogspot.com/2009/05/beef-jerky-recipes.html

When are you going to cop yourself on and become a tv chef?

You could be one of the hairy bikers :pac:

columok wrote: »

Either make it yourself or order the mixed value pack from wildwestjerky.co.uk! Incredible stuff!

Any questions on the making of it just fire away!

Is it time consuming/cost effective??

'spose i should just google it.

brianthebard

itsallaboutheL wrote: »

When are you going to cop yourself on and become a tv chef?

You could be one of the hairy bikers :pac:

Feck off I hate those two! :mad:

osotogari

Anyone know where I could get some biltong/jerky over on the southside? Trying to pick some up for ages but can't seem to find it.

Khannie

columok wrote: »

Any questions on the making of it just fire away!

Do you have a dehydrator? If so, where did you get it from?

Khannie

cmyk wrote: »

How do these compare? http://biltong.ie/biltongie_products.html

Gonna give them a bash alright. Cheers.

Canis Lupus

Crap I'm totally going to have to buy me a big bag of biltong tomorrow now and I'm trying to drop a couple of pounds.... Thanks

Mellor

It worth point out that the protein and carb content can vary a lot.
some of the more processed ones, have a lot of salt and sugar added.

Naturally made with added chili is the nuts though

emon

osotogari wrote: »

Anyone know where I could get some biltong/jerky over on the southside? Trying to pick some up for ages but can't seem to find it.

Not really southside but try Terry Whelan's Butcher on Parnell Street.

Khannie

emon wrote: »

Not really southside but try Terry Whelan's Butcher on Parnell Street.

Nice one. Might try knocking in on my way home.

columok

I wouldn't rate that Whelan's biltong tbh. Worth a try though I guess. You'd be better of buying the biltong.ie peri peri or buying from wildwestjerky

In terms of making jerky:

1) Head to the butchers and ask for top round (you can also get this prepacked in tesco). If they have a slicer get them to cut 5mm slices. Otherwise slice it at home yourself. Too thick and they'll take ages to dry out and to thin they'll be over crispy (which i don't mind that much.) Slice with the grain for chewier or against the grain for softer. I prefer with teh grain.

2) Remove ALL fat from the meat as it will only go rancid. Choose either a hot or cold marinade. I find a cold marinade (12 hours) goes really well and my teriyaki marinade works really well! I used one similar to this:
http://homecooking.about.com/od/beefrecipes/r/blbeef109.htm

3) Again follow one of the legion jerky guides but I typically set the oven to 60 degrees C and leave the meat on racks for 8 hours until it is bendy, with no moisture but not breaky. Keep the oven door ajar to allow the moisture to escape. I'll generally check each individual piece for moisture. There's normally a few pieces that take an hour or two longer to dry fully.

You can lay the meat on a cross rack or if you have one directional rack you can hang the meat with toothpicks.

Really recommend making it. It's time intensive but you get to have a giant box of jerky. Try a kg of roundsteak for your first batch (500g of jerky) and for your second try a 2kg batch.

Khannie

Sound. Thanks. I'll hit the butchers tomorrow lunchtime. That sounds lovely.

Gonna order some of that biltong too. Sounds like it's handy enough to make your own biltong box.

Dublin_Gunner

Khannie wrote: »

Gonna give them a bash alright. Cheers.

+ 1 for the Biltong.

I know the guys who make/import it. Always have a few packs of it at home. Bllomin' addictive stuff too lol once I start on a pack I can't stop

dublingeezer

Khannie wrote: »

I'm finding myself eating more and more of this. Anyone know where can I get it for reasonable money? I know myprotein do it. Looking for alternatives (mostly in flavour, but I'd like the option of 25g packs).

That **** is full of msg, buy some lean beef, strip it and marinate in your flavour of choice. Dry it out using a Dehydrator or hang it up for a few days, it's a lot cheaper and good protein without the additives and chemicals! I make about 2-4 lbs a month.

TheJones

Well done to the budding Jamie Olivers of this thread but short of making it yourself try tablemountain butchers in Parnell Street, specialised buthchers in everything South African, I'm sure they can sort you out!

Mellor

Sigh, its pretty easy to find jerky with nothing added, except maybe chilli or teriaki flavouring (natural flavours btw)

I've never seen MSG on a jerky label. I check label religiously.

Edit: I checked the wildwest site there, and their "nuggets", which are clearly v.processed from the name alone contain MSG. But, imo, these aren't jerky.

columok

Mellor wrote:

I checked the wildwest site there, and their "nuggets", which are clearly v.processed from the name alone contain MSG. But, imo, these aren't jerky.

the natural variety is where its at flavour wise. Not sure how it stacks up with additives though.

bungaro79

anyone know of any place in cork selling it???

i've tried protein shakes but just can't drink them so would this be a good alternative to get my protein in or should you only be eating a certain amount of it daily???

had biltong down in south africa a few years back and thought it was unreal!

Hypertrophy

Great idea for a high protein snack.....

Dublin_Gunner

Hypertrophy wrote: »

Great idea for a high protein snack.....

That's exactly what it's marketed as.... (Biltong.ie anyway)

Mellor

columok wrote: »

the natural variety is where its at flavour wise. Not sure how it stacks up with additives though.

It's not the flavour that the issue is with, chilli is simply chilli flakes, habanero is tabasco type sauce.

Some of the worse brands, add a lot of sugar for a sort of glaze (natural flavour too), and apparently the nuggets have MSG (only the nuggets as far as I've seen)

columok

mellor wrote:

Some of the worse brands, add a lot of sugar for a sort of glaze (natural flavour too), and apparently the nuggets have MSG (only the nuggets as far as I've seen)

I put brown sugar in my marinade too. Probably the only safe bet is to look at the carbs per 100g jerky vs. per 200g of regular beef.

Khannie

Hypertrophy wrote: »

Great idea for a high protein snack.....

Yep. I've found even 25g of it is enough to keep me happy for a bit if I'm peckish. Also, I love beef.

Mellor

columok wrote: »

I put brown sugar in my marinade too. Probably the only safe bet is to look at the carbs per 100g jerky vs. per 200g of regular beef.

But a lot of the sugar would stay in the marinade, not on the jerky. I simply check carbs and protein content, try to get protein above 50g/100g, carbs as low as possible.

Khannie wrote: »

Yep. I've found even 25g of it is enough to keep me happy for a bit if I'm peckish. Also, I love beef.

Yeah, I've a 50g bag in the drawer here, I consider that a big portion. Probably make it last the next two hours before bed, 140 cals left today to maintain 1000 call def.


The problem is if I open it, i'll eat it all. Then I'll get hungry again, hmmm, 900 def is ok right :D:D

emon

I've been using biltong/jerky as my protein supplement since I've started doing low carb..There's some good ones on ebay as well (I've tried a few of them so I know what they taste like)..

c - 13

Khannie, making biltong is a cinch to be honest. I made my first dryer out of two beer boxes and it worked perfectly. My latest one is made out of a converted locker and can take about 2 - 3 Kg of meat at a time. Can throw up pics/details if you like.

d'Oracle

c - 13 wrote: »

Khannie, making biltong is a cinch to be honest. I made my first dryer out of two beer boxes and it worked perfectly. My latest one is made out of a converted locker and can take about 2 - 3 Kg of meat at a time. Can throw up pics/details if you like.

I'd like.

EileenG

There's a butchers in Parnell Street, opposite McDonalds in the ILAC center which makes its own biltong and charges about €3 per 100g. I buy quite a lot there.

There's also a South Africian Shop (Jumblia or something like that) near the Capel Street end of North Great Strand Street which has a huge variety of bilgong and jerky, made from beef, springbok, ostrich etc, and often with chili as well as plain.

the drifter

right im going to go harass random butchers and polish shops.....

DM-BM

http://www.beefjerkysnacks.ie/index.php

emon

Whelan's butcher on Parnell Street has a website as well where you can shop online. handy for people like me who don't live in dublin..

http://www.tablemountainfoods.com/

d'Oracle

Blatantly going to be a big uptake in Jerky sales this week.

Boom industry.

Mellor

Just ate the whole pack, I want more. Food talk makes me hungry

c - 13

d'Oracle wrote: »

I'd like.

For those not in the know, biltong is spiced meat (generally beef or game) that's hung and air dried. Despite how it looks it tastes lovely.

Cardboard Biltong Drying Box
To make the box itself I used the template for the wooden drying box from http://www.sa-austin.com/other.html (the first image).

It was made from two empty beer boxes with the tops cut off and sellotaped together. The whole thing was then covered in tinfoil to prevent the box from getting soggy from any drips.

To make the air holes I poked the holes from the inside out using a sharpened chopstick.

Wired the light fixing though the back of the box with a 60 watt light bulb to cause the air to be drawn in from the side holes and out through the top.

Put a tinfoil wrapped shelf with several smaller air holes above the light bulb to prevent drips from landing on the naked light bulb and burning while unattended.

Next part is to put in something to hang the biltong on, the cardboard structure was a bit weak to put through some sort of pole so I took some clean plastic covered clothes line and threaded it through the sides of the box a couple of times to make a 3 x 3 matrix of little clothes lines.

This type of hanger wouldn't really be suited to dry larger lumps of meat so I was restricted to making stookies (precut into strips).

Box is now complete and can start on the biltong itself.

BiltongBox1.jpg
BiltongBox2.jpg

Biltong
Bought a 1KG lump of silverside and cut it length-ways into steaks, personally I find it better to salt the meat now and then cut into strips to get the salt spread more even across all the strips.

The amount of salt that people say you should use varies hugely from person to person. I just experimented until i found the right amount for me.

I layer the steaks in a pyrex dish as salt layer, meat, salt layer, meat salt layer and so on. Then leave stand for an hour. Its best to use rock salt (not sea salt though).

When thats ready I put the steaks into a pyrex dish bath of apple cider vinegar and leave them in there until the outside of the meat starts to go slightly whitish, time varies depending on the thickness of your steaks. Some people prefer to scrape off the excess salt before the bath, personally I don't bother.

Remove the steaks from the bath and gently pat them dryish with kitchen towel. Then slice the meat with the "grain" of the meat into strips of the required size.

Next is the seasoning - traditional seasoning is a dry type usually made up of coarse ground black pepper and coriander. I like to dry fry them for a little while before crushing them as it leaves out a little more flavor.

Stick the meat and the seasoning in a zip lock bag, seal and give it a good shake until its all well coated.

You can add chilli and whatever at this stage as well but when I tried that i found it very dry and not that nice to eat so I made a wet mix of the seasoning and a little water/apple cider vinegar. As you can see in the pic I made it too wet and it dripped everywhere.

Biltong.jpg

If using a wet seasoning i like to leave it in the mix in the fridge overnight before hanging to give it a chance to soak up the flavours.

Hang the meat in the dryer (making sure none of the pieces touch the other), turn on your bulb and close the door.

Drying time depends on thickness obviously, and also how wet/dry you like your biltong. The outside should be hard and the inside wet/dry to your liking. I prefer dry to extra dry myself.

Eat and enjoy.

Can't find my photos of the locker one but its basically a more structurally sound version of that one

itsallaboutheL

EileenG wrote: »

There's also a South Africian Shop (Jumblia or something like that) near the Capel Street end of North Great Strand Street which has a huge variety of bilgong and jerky, made from beef, springbok, ostrich etc, and often with chili as well as plain.

I saw one of these in cork the other day but couldn't remember where i had heard about south african shops.... spose i'll take a wander in.

EileenG

They sell an amazing amount of very odd food, but they also have Biltong, so I'm happy.

Khannie

Game on......

d'Oracle

Awesome, but I think I like the photo of the cute lil' baby more.

Khannie

The pink jedi.

Khannie

In the oven:




The finished product: (there was about 2x this amount....but I just can't stop myself...nyom...nyom...nyom....:pac: :pac: :pac:)


The darkness is from the marinade, not the drying.

optimistic_

Bought some Billtong at Africa Day today, nice stuff.

250g bag for a tenner, gonna order more online. Decent protien snack, and an easy way to add protien to your snacks. This'll make diet planning a lot easier.

columok

Nice work dude!!!

Where did you buy the meat and what cut did you use. I found that by the time I removed all the fat the meat was in a range of chunk/strip sizes. Maybe I was a bit OTT with cutting off every last piece of fat!

Khannie

columok wrote: »

Where did you buy the meat and what cut did you use. I found that by the time I removed all the fat the meat was in a range of chunk/strip sizes. Maybe I was a bit OTT with cutting off every last piece of fat!

There wasn't a even hint of fat on mine. I got it in the local butchers and told him what I was going to use it for - I use him a lot. He'd had a guy doing biltong before so knew I wanted "pure lean" meat. He took out what I'd call "round roast" (I presume that's silverside) and cut the centre out of it, then cut it into strips for me. He was left with a funny cut but didn't seem to mind.

Happy to get you some from him for you if you'd like.

columok

I think it's top round or flank steak that I've always gotten.

I tried to explain to one of the butchers what I was doing and he kept saying to me "you're gonna ruin that meat if you cook it for 10 hours better to just stick on the pan- 2 minutes each side!" :mad: