Advice to chew on from SA’s first ‘Dr Biltong’

RESEARCH opportunities on how to cultivate the perfect dried meat are vast, and there is much to be explored, South Africa’s very own Dr Biltong said yesterday.

Maxine Jones, who received her doctorate in Food Science from Stellenbosch University this week, said she always had an interest in food – and meat, especially.

Her published research focused exclusively on how to make quality biltong, but she hoped future research would influence the government to implement standardised drying procedures.

“Biltong isn’t such a simple matter as we may think; there’s a science behind it,” Jones said.

Jones’s industry-based research project focused on different aspects of biltong processing, such as drying procedures.

She travelled to countries such as Namibia, Netherlands, Thailand and the remote French territory of Reunion Island to conduct her research. “Every country has its speciality products, and South Africa is known for its biltong. I would like to see more research conducted because the biltong industry is an economically important sector,” Jones said. Jones’s findings include:

Adding vinegar in the salting/spicing step of beef biltong does not make meat dry faster;

Beef biltong without vinegar has a pH of 5.56 to 5.75, while the addition of vinegar lowered its pH to 4.89 to 4.93, which prevents the growth of microbes;

Drying rates depend on the type of meat muscle and also the source of the meat. Given the specific parameters used in the study, gemsbok topside took 76 hours to dry; fatty beef topside 118 hours; while beef topside and silverside both required about 96 hours to dry.

Yeasts and moulds, which often cause a problem during storage, generally become visible after six weeks.

Although not visible to the naked eye, they can already be present in high levels at the completion of drying.