How to Make Droewors – South Africa’s Version of Beef Jerky Sausage

Step 1

Cut the meat into strips just small enough to fit through the feeder tube of your grinder. I am using rump tails, but you can use topside or silverside just as successfully.

Step 2

Place the meat in your freezer for 35 to 45 minutes until partially frozen. Measure out and combine the salt, ground coriander seed, ground cloves, ground black pepper, and saltpeter. If you can't find saltpeter you can use Prage powder 1 to substitute at a dosage of 20g. This will replace the salt and saltpeter.

Step 3

Remove the meat from the freezer and run it through your grinder using the coarse grinding plate.

Step 4

Place the ground meat back in the tray and return it to the freezer for 20 minutes. This chilling process keeps the fat solid and prevents it from smearing into the meat resulting in an inferior texture.

Step 5

Swap out the coarse grinding plate gor a medium grinding plate.

Step 6

Remove the meat from the freezer, add the spice mixture and mix this into the mince.

Step 7

Run the meat through the grinder again.

Step 8

Fit a 12mm funnel to your sausage filler and load the meat into the hopper of the filler.

Step 9

Feed the sausage casing onto the funnel. I am using 16mm collagen casings as they are just so much easier and cleaner to use than natural casings.

Step 10

Twist off the end of the casing and start filling. Twist off the end of the casing and continue with the next length of sausage.

Step 11

Pour a cup of white vinegar into a large pan and add enough boiling water to bring this to depth of a half an inch.

Step 12

Dip each length of sausage into the solution making sure to wet the sausage all over.

Step 13

Hang the sausage in a cool draughty place until it has lost 40 to 50 percent of its weight. This can take from 3 to 6 days depending on your weather and humidity conditions.

Step 14

And there it is, beautifully dried droewors, or beef sausage jerky just begging to be paired with a good cold beer.