Take yourself back to those Cape Colony days when the French Huguenots produced wine and vinegar.
Go on a journey to when the Cape was the halfway stop for seafarers plying the spice routes of the East.
Take your mind back to the Afrikaners who left the Cape in their dust as they made the daunting trek up north with their ox wagons.
In those primitive times the trekkers had no Samsung or Kelvinator refrigerators to keep their meat fresh.
So, they had to come up with methods to preserve large quantities of the stuff.
Their meat was prepared (soaked in a vinegar and spice mix), hung out to dry for a few weeks and then packed in cloth bags.
Now, bring your mental time machine back to the present day, where biltong is as South African as a Nkandla fire pool, as South African as AB de Villiers inventing a never before seen cricket paddle sweep, as South African as questions over Heyneke Meyer’s Springbok team selection, or as South African as Leon Schuster taking a flat-hand slap from a furious farmer in indescribably short khakis after a hilarious candid prank.
It’s billies and we love it!
It’s definitely not beef jerky, Yanks – so please just stop comparing the two!
When I was asked, on Friday, August 21, to adjudicate a biltong contest between some of the East Rand’s finest butchers and suppliers of the magically cured meat I leaped out of my chair at this rare opportunity.
It’s not every day that you get to combine your love of writing and biltong munching.
Three lucky Benoni City Times readers — Nico Maritz, Carmen van Heerden and Xolani Mkhwanazi — and I set out to give the ultimate verdict on who we thought supplies the best billies in the East, when local butchers Meat Spot Benoni (in Tom Jones Street), Meat World (corner North Rand Road and Rondebult Road, K90 North Shopping Centre, Boksburg and Paul Kruger Highway, Springs) and Matt’s Meat Market (Sixth Avenue, Northmead) provided us with some meaty treats for a taste-testing extravaganza.
Our judging criterion was quite simple and the key points of look, fattiness, saltiness and size of pieces were what we used to make our final decision.
In my verdict I asked myself one simple yet serious question: Who will be my go-to biltong choice when the Rugby World Cup kicks off on September 18?
Faced with piled plates of delicious biltong (the butchers were not identified) we approached each one with intense focus and deep concentration.
We owed it to those biltong forefathers mentioned above, who pioneered the good stuff, to achieve a reasonable and unbiased outcome for our fellow man.
After some enthusiastic discussion and debate it was decided that Meat World’s biltong was the victor, however, each offered their own appealing characteristics and tastes and are worth a visit to get your biltong fix.
We thank the butcheries involved for their involvement and participation.
Until we “meat” again!
