Make Your Own Biltong and Droewors: Including sausages, and cured and smoked meats Paperback – 15 Dec. 2004

This is very similar in style & layout to a book of Braai recipes I bought through (and have also reviewed on) Amazon. Unsurprising, I suppose, since it's from the same publisher. It's in a large, glossy, well-illustrated format, so the fact that it's also very short (just under 50 pages) is no big deal. There's only so many things you can say about biltong, sausages, and what to do with them, after all!Nevertheless, it's a decent little book, well-written, clear & concise. Importantly, it doesn't, as many cookery books do, waste a lot of space on unhelpful & unnecessary illustration. Most of what's in it is at least relatively unobtrusive, if not downright helpful and / or needed! My one minor caveat goes as follows...I bought it because the Braai book was disappointing where biltong is concerned. I know how to make the stuff, but I was after spice recipes for it. One hunt around the net also didn't find any satisfactory i.e. detailed recipes, and then I found this. The spice recipes here are an improvement on the Braai book, but still a bit vague, as well as on the industrial scale, given at 25 & 50kg (of meat to be spiced) quantities! You can scale down, of course, but salt is given at 1-2 kg per 50kg, coriander at 160-320g ditto, so still a bit "Errr.... Ummmm..."If you are interested in biltong spice, I had another more extensive hunt round the net. As a result of that, and partly from the book, the proportions that then resulted were 40g salt, 40g toasted (i.e. dry-fried) & pestled coriander seed, and 10g pestled black peppercorns as a base recipe (which is surprisingly peppery - you may prefer to reduce or remove the latter). That gave a recipe that, to me, tasted something like the bought spices I've used in the past. I don't use sugar, bicarb should be unnecessary if you brush the meat with vinegar before spicing, and saltpetre seems to be purely cosmetic (it makes the meat stay red, apparently). To the base you can add one further spice, if you wish. I've seen nutmeg, allspice, aniseed, cloves, chilli, paprika, and garlic salt all suggested. Cloves should work too, but add all sparingly, as the book says, otherwise you'll over-power the meat! I tried 5g of mace (I'd run out of nutmeg) on my first attempt at home made spice, though I think that wasn't enough. I had 2kg of silverside, and 22g spice left over out of 95g, so you can work out for yourselves how far it goes.Ahem! I'm supposed to be reviewing the book, not giving you biltong spice recipes! I've never yet made a sausage, cured or otherwise, but the droewors section of it is the equal of the biltong bit. Everything is equally clear & concise, and there are lots of tasty possibilities that one day I will experiment with (especially if my neighbour one day keeps pigs again...). You can probably find most of what's in here on the net, but I paid less than a fiver for my copy, and now I've got everything I want in one place. I'd recommend buying it!

I made up my mind that I wanted to make my own sausages because I am suspicious of the ingredients of commercial sausages. With young children in the family, we want to know that what they are eating is nutritious and good quality.I bought this book to teach me, a novice, how to make sausages properly.1. The instructions, accompanied by step-by-step photos were very clear and well written.2. There are diagrams of beef, lamb and pork cuts of meat so that if you live in a country with a different word for 'topside' for instance, you will be able to show your butcher a picture that will help you get the right cut.3. The book also shows you dry curing, wet curing and smoking of meat, with diagrams on how to make your own smokers, and your own drying boxes, or what to look for in a ready made product.4. There are instructions how to make Salami, Pastrami, Bacon, Corned Beef, Leipoldt Ham, Liver Sausage, Kassler Ribs, Russian sausages, ham etc, and how to hang them up to dry, how to preserve them and how to freeze and store them.5. But the authors don't stop there. They also include recipes for biltong spread, bread cooked over the fire, dips, salads, muffins, pies, casseroles, various glazes such as Beer Glaze, Mustard Glaze, Apricot Glaze.6. The book uses the Metric system of kilograms, millilitres etc.7. The book is South African. They use a word, Speck, that may confuse other nations, especially as it is sometimes translated as bacon. The authors state in a coloured box that Speck is the fat of pork belly or mutton tail.This is a goldmine of a book, and the step by step photos explaining the process build up confidence and make it seem easy enough for anyone to try their hand at this sort of home food preparation. What surprised me was the fact that all this is crammed into an A4 sized book with only 47 pages.

Great reference book

This is not the most extensive text on the subject of making Bilton and Droewors but it did exactly what I wanted it to do. It gives concise and simple instructions on the subject and is perfect for installing the confidence to get you up and running. Some might consider it expensive.

I used to own a copy, but during our move we lost it. I am so glad to have this book back for me to use when I need it.

Lots of useful and helpful tips and recipes.

A brief introduction to making biltong, dry sausage and curing meat. It's a very thin book though, mostly taken up by recipes for how to use the final product.

Nothing