We have written a number of articles on biltong making, here for the first time we tested this electronic Kalahari Khabu Biltong Dryer.
While there are a number of this type of machine out there, what makes this one different is that it was designed by South Africans with a long history in the meat industry. Many innovations were included. The Kalahari Khabu has been optimized for fast biltong making but at the same time maintaining all of the other features that make this unit still suitable for drying, fruit, fish, meringues and yes even jerky. Further attention to detail include insect/fly countermeasures, magnetic closing door, fully digital timer and temperature control, stainless steel housing, trays, handle and locks, huge rear mounted fan.
From the manufacturers website:-
“If you crave Biltong and other dried snacks, you’ll know how expensive they can be at the store, or from specialty markets. Our best-selling biltong cabinet means that you and your family can satisfy all those cravings with salty homemade biltong, jerky, fruit, dried herbs, fish or droëwors whenever you want – at a fraction of the cost. If you enjoy jerky regularly, you simply need this cabinet”
Buy a Kalahari Khabu Biltong Dryer here
We have traditionally cut fairly large strips of meat and slow dried them over a period of 5 or 6 days just using a fan. Ambient temperature changes over a 24 hour period and therefore so does the drying rate in a traditional Biltong dryer.
This Kalahari Khabu dehydrator has a thermostat that for the first time in this type of machine goes as low as 20C/68F. So day or night, summer or winter the temperature can be maintained at a fixed level. It does come with hanging bars and hooks to allow you to hang your meat in the traditional way. What interested us is the ability to make much thinner sliced snap sticks. There is no reason we could not have tried this using our traditional hanging method the problem however becomes hanging space.
The more strips of meat you create the more hanging real estate you would need. We would normally have enough space to hang about 12lbs of meat sliced the thick way. Here we started off with 6lbs of meat sliced thin. By the time we were done we had so many strips that we would run out of hanging space in our traditional biltong dryer.
Enter the drying trays!
Not having sliced meat so thin before we actually made it a bit too thick meaning that we only used every second tray. Had we not done this the meat would rub up against the tray above it. So, next time we will slice the meat even thinner and utilize all of the trays.
The quick and easy method
The results were outstanding and the family really approved. While they really do like the traditional thickly sliced rare inside slices that we usually make, this was a welcome change.
So if you’re impatient and want to get biltong snacks prepared really fast then take a look at the Kalahari Khabu Biltong Dryer. This batch has just come out of ours and we are already thinking about how we are going to be doing our next batch.