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  1. #11
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    Default Re: DIY Meat Processing

    Quote Originally Posted by Toxxyc View Post
    I watched this other day in fact and it was really interesting. That carcass is pretty mouldy on the inside and I was very surprised.

    A walk in fridge/freezer is always first choice but its a luxury I don't have, hence trying to find a work around.

  2. #12
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    Default Re: DIY Meat Processing

    Quote Originally Posted by Adoons View Post
    I don't age game as I don't cook or braai game. Just don't like the taste. So everything is made into biltong and drywors. I also make some hamburger patties with a 50:50 mix with beef. If not making anything else than described here, no need for ageing.

    I do slaughter my own beef sometimes. They get aged for about 5 days in the cold room at 1 - 2 degrees C. Sheep hang till they are cold, then maybe another day and then I put them in a freezer for a few hours until they are partly frozen before sawing into chops. Semi frozen carcasses work better in my opinion if the only action is sawing them in pieces.
    We eat a lot of minced venison mixed with roughly 30% beef fat in various forms. We also eat quite a few roasts. The bulk though is made into thin wors, droewors and biltong but I am keen to take at least one animal next year and process into the various cuts etc.

  3. #13
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    Default Re: DIY Meat Processing

    Up to 6 weeks is possible. But thats why i say u have to check the vacuum packs. 3 weeks is the best bet. But still once a vacuum bag pulls air it will go off quick.

    Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

  4. #14
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    Pretoria, South Africa
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    Default Re: DIY Meat Processing

    Quote Originally Posted by DaavG View Post
    I watched this other day in fact and it was really interesting. That carcass is pretty mouldy on the inside and I was very surprised.

    A walk in fridge/freezer is always first choice but its a luxury I don't have, hence trying to find a work around.
    I would buy an old upright fridge. Single or double door. I currently have a double-door fridge (top/bottom doors), and it's one-piece open on the inside, that I use for keeping my beer nice and cool when fermenting. It'll probably not fit a whole kudu hanging, but I'm 100% sure an impala, quartered, will fit hanging perfectly. I have an STC-1000 on there as well, so I can keep the temperatures where I want them. To age the meat hanging, you'd ideally want to allow airflow, so a small fan might work, and you want to keep the temperatures as low as possible. 1°C, if you can. The mould that grows isn't harmful, apparently, and is the same mould you get on blue cheese. That's why very long dry-aged meats have that "funky" taste in them. It's not my favourite. I prefer wet aging. Wet aging is a lot harder to do, though, as you have a lot of moisture constantly on the meat. Dry aging is easier at home as the dry surface doesn't allow the growth of too many funky stuff.

    Also, all the oxidised sections of meat are cut off after dry aging, you can't eat it. So all the darker/drier parts are cut off and discarded. So while you can theoretically dry-age a single steak, it results in massive loss, so it's not really worth it.

    Personally, if I had to dry age venison, I would just dry-age large sections. The rear legs (boude) and perhaps the neck. The rest will loose too much volume of meat and you won't gain much aging something like ribs or so on. Fillets and the ribs high up are flavourful enough that you don't need more of the dry age flavour, so I'd rather just cut those into chops or steaks.

  5. #15
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    Default Re: DIY Meat Processing

    I don't think there is any substitute for a walk in cold room. The cold room works on the basis that the fan blows air over a chiller unit, thus cooling it down and dispersing cold air around the cold room. The compressor outside regulates the temperature of the cooling liquid passing through the chiller unit. In this process, if there is any moisture in the room, as it hits the chiller unit, it condenses against the unit, and it is removed via a drainage pipe, out the cold room, so that the inside of the cold room stays dry. (generally at a much lower humidity than outside the cold room.) The dryness of a cold room is crucial for the microbiological stability of the meat that is stored. Most microorganisms, and sources of contamination are on the outside of the meat, so that it starts on the outside and works its way in. If you continuously strip the outside of the meat from moisture by applying a flow of cold dry air over it, then it will retard surface grow of bacteria. Hence, a cold room is very effective at dry aging meat in a microbiologically safe way. On the flip side, the drying effect can be excessive after long exposure, so that small animals like springbok will loose too much moisture from the ribs, and will turn the rib meat into biltong after two weeks of hanging, and the pellicle on the other cuts will be thick and hard to remove. You land up loosing too much meat. My general process is 3-7 days for a springbok and 7-14 days for the large animals. After that I vacuum pack and wet age for 2 weeks before freezing. I know some people dry age with the skin on to stop the meat from drying out too much, but then you land up with ticks and other nasty things in the cold room.

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