Fragle Rok
Join Fragle as he and his friends explore, learn, and laugh. We cover health, history, psychology, philosophy, and more! Fragle traveled with the Grateful Dead for 10 years before moving to Taiwan to teach English. Now in Asia, he is bringing the past to the present by discussing social issues such as addiction, trauma, and mental health. Get ready to Laugh and learn baby, Let's go!
Fragle Rok
The Braai Guy Interview
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Join us as we dig into the roots of The Braai Guy aka Derik Du Plessis.
We dig into the texture of his days: teaching jiu-jitsu for free, running a nationwide frozen-meat operation, and adjusting South African flavors for Taiwanese palates. Derik breaks down biltong vs. jerky in plain language—why vinegar and coriander seed matter, how humidity rewrites the process, and the difference between curing and cold smoking. He walks through safe techniques for low-temperature smoke, why pastrami takes 21 days of brining plus smoke and steam, and a tenderizing trick you’ll want to try tonight: vacuum-sealing steaks with mango slices for a week to unlock butter-soft meat.
Bon appétit
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Alright, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of Fraggle and Friends. Alright, today I welcome a gangster-ass friend of mine. I'm not going to try to say your last name though. Derek. How do I say your last name? I do a duplicity. Duplicity. I do a really good job of making duplicity. Making myself and all Americans look terrible. Culturally.
SPEAKER_06Should be an easy name to say. It's kind of it's a French name. It just looks weird. That's not what I would have guessed. I would have guessed like duplicity. Yeah, many people when they read it, I say duplicis.
SPEAKER_05They read it like it like it looks. Yeah, but yeah, duplicate. Duplessis. That's the last name. So it's actually a French name.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, perfect. It's French, yes. Is that because South Africa was colonized by the French?
SPEAKER_06No, no, no, no. Well, they are my father's side of the family is from the French Huguenotes. And they yeah, they got chased out of France, I guess. Then they moved to Holland, and then from Holland they moved to South Africa. Something like that. Yeah. The history is kind of kind of kind of crazy, you know, for our family.
SPEAKER_04How how is that in South Africa? Like, is it would it be kind of similar to me, where it's like my on my mom's side was like German immigrants, and then my dad's side was like Indian and Spanish, and then they all came together, and now I got like you know, four or five different ethnicities. Are you kind of similar to that?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, we have the same same kind of thing in South Africa where people came from like the Afrikaans-speaking people in South Africa right now, they are more from the Dutch side. And then the English-speaking people, there's people from England. The English, the British took over or colonized South Africa, the Dutch came, and people from France and you know, all over the world come. Yeah, so our family, uh, my family comes from Germany, France, and I guess Holland, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Oh wow, yeah, that's pretty pretty similar to us then, huh?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess uh we try to colonize everywhere.
SPEAKER_04So what what part are you talking about white people or what? Oh man. I mean, that's kind of the story of that's the kind of the story of my family. I'm pretty sure like my great grandfather was Spanish, went to the US, hooked up with a native girl, and then yeah, okay. Yeah, so it's kind of the story, the traditional story of colonization.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, we all we all come from all these mixed culture and stuff, yeah. So it's the same.
SPEAKER_04Not Taiwanese people though, man.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, well, we're we're helping out here.
Parenting Through Combat Sports
SPEAKER_04It's true. It's changing. It's definitely changing a lot, I think. Yeah, yeah. What part of the people? I mean, I've done my bit. How many kids do you have? Yeah, two. Two children. Yeah, a boy and another boy or a boy and a girl?
SPEAKER_06A boy and a girl. A boy and a girl, yeah. 19 and 16. For real? I didn't know they were that big.
SPEAKER_04Well, how old's your boy? Yeah. 19. He's the 19 year old. Oh, the boy's 19, the girl's 16, and the boy's competing in BJJ. I think I lost you, so I'm just chilling.
SPEAKER_05Oh, you were gone. I didn't hear you. The last question I heard was, How old is your boy? And I said 19.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's 19 and he's competing in BJJ right now.
SPEAKER_06No, he's actually moved over to Muay Thai. For real?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_06He's been doing really well. He's he's he just fought like last year's Taiwan champion level and he beat him. He went to some world championships in Thailand and he came second. He's doing really well in Muay Thai.
SPEAKER_04Holy shit, man, that's crazy. Wow, he did BJJ for a long time, right?
SPEAKER_06Yeah. He still he still does it. I mean, we had uh BJJ class last night. He's actually coaching now. He just thought he's got a class going on right now. He's like the beginners. So yeah, he still does the BJJ, he still does the judo, but oh, he's actually fighting in a karate tournament. He doesn't even do karate, but he's gonna fight in a karate fight. So he just does anything that's related to fighting.
SPEAKER_04Fuck yeah. Wow, you raised him right, man. Good job.
SPEAKER_06You you you you completely you it were gone for a while. So I couldn't hear anything you say right now.
SPEAKER_04So that's you raised your boy right. I didn't have any exposure to to combat sports as a child. I mean, a little bit of Taekwondo, but I I wouldn't even count it. It wasn't until I came to Taiwan in my mid-30s that I started boxing. And when I did, it changed everything. My thinking, my body, my confidence, everything. So that's amazing. He's 19 and he's already coaching.
SPEAKER_06The last thing I no, the last thing I heard you said you didn't have anything as a child, any con combat sports a child, a little bit of, and then you you cut out.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I just didn't have any exposure to combat sports as a child.
SPEAKER_06Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_06So yeah, me too as a child, and that wasn't really my plan for my son, but I'm so glad we did it. I mean, it it really it really kind of formed him to become this this amazing person, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Really humble, honest place, and but he won't take any shit.
SPEAKER_06That's for sure. No, nobody's gonna give him any shit. Yeah, but but he will also not, he's also not the kind of guy now that goes out and looks for shit. Because he knows he knows his ability and he respects people around him. Yeah, yeah. So combat sport, jutsu, judo, muay thai right now, it really did a lot for him.
SPEAKER_04Nice. I was doing some Muay Thai and boxing last night. I kind of switched over to Muay Thai.
SPEAKER_06Oh, yeah, that's much more fun in boxing. Yeah, I mean, I'm kind of uh that's actually the the Yeah. That's the only reason why I was willing to cancel my class tonight and do this podcast because tonight's boxing and not Muay Thai.
SPEAKER_04Would you go to MMA gym in Hawaiian?
SPEAKER_06No, we have a we have a Muay Thai gym, a Muay Thai boxing gym, and then we also teach uh we also teach jiu-jitsu there. Oh, right on. Man, that's awesome. So the the the main thing is the Muay Thai. They have Muay Thai on Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays, and then they have boxing on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And then I mean my son and another Italian guy, we teach jiu-jitsu three times a week. We just have I teach Mondays.
SPEAKER_05Tom also he teaches on Wednesdays, and Brian teaches tonight on Thursdays.
SPEAKER_04Wow. So you just run the meat company and then you teach jujitsu, and that's that's everything you do for income?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, well the jiu-jitsu I do for free. I don't really, that's not I just go there, I teach. It's it's not for any money or anything. It's just I'm just giving back to the community.
SPEAKER_03Oh hell yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, but the meat business is the is my main is my only income.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Did you say my last guest on the podcast was Raphael Miranda? Did you say you met him?
SPEAKER_05Raphael Miranda? No, no.
SPEAKER_04He's like the I think he's like one of the top BJJ coaches in Taiwan. And he coaches BJJ.
SPEAKER_06Oh big guy. I know him, and I've met him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like uh, yeah, I've I've met him definitely. I don't know if he will ever didn't you introduce no, it wasn't you, it was Anthony at the Halloween party. Was he at the Halloween party? Yeah, he was.
SPEAKER_04He was.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah, yeah. I met him there. We spoke there a little bit, but only briefly, then I was on my way again. Wait, you were at the Halloween party? Yeah, no. And I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure you and I talked for a little while there too. I might have been the first time, huh? Yeah, there was definitely I think two Halloween parties that I saw you there. I didn't know Rafael. I've I've met him, I've met him there, and I've met him at some of the competitions. But you know, just like maybe one of but maybe Brian will fight one of his students and then we will stand next to each other and coach. So we didn't really, we don't know each other, we know off each other.
Taiwan Arrival And Staying For Love
SPEAKER_04Right on. Yeah, yeah, he's a good dude. He's a good dude for sure. Yeah. Cool. So we're gonna get into everything, and the thing I'm most interested in, the thing I'm most interested in is like the curing of meat and all the different kinds of meat you do. And I was looking at your menu before, but before we get into that, because some of my listeners are American, which means they're culturally and globally unaware of what's going on in the world. So I kind of want to ask a little bit about South Africa and what led you to here. What led you to Taiwan? And then and then we'll kind of get into what you do. But yeah, okay. Okay, so what brought you here and how long you've been here? Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Okay, so you asked me how long have I been in Taiwan or or why did I come to Taiwan?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, what led you here in the first place?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I I actually came here, it was I really came here by chance.
SPEAKER_03I never even I'm gonna take your video off.
SPEAKER_04This is like a bad trip. Okay, I think you sound normal again. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02All right, oh Lord.
SPEAKER_03Jesus. Okay.
SPEAKER_02All right, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Okay, you sound good again, I think. On again? Yeah, okay, fucking heck. All right.
SPEAKER_04What led you to Taiwan? How'd you get here?
SPEAKER_06Okay, let's let's try again for a third time. Yeah, yeah, so you know, I I really came to Taiwan by by chance. I never even thought about Taiwan or Asia for that matter. I was traveling and I wanted to travel many places, but I don't even know one. Why in Taiwan? I'm like you. Taiwan? Where the hell is that place? I don't I is it China or Thailand or Japan? Where's Taiwan? Wait, how'd you hear how'd you hear about it? Somebody suggested it to you, or you my brother, he came to Taiwan, but I still didn't know where Taiwan was. So I are you there? I booked a I booked a ticket to Taiwan, not knowing where I'm going to, and just knowing I'm going to visit my brother. I came here. The plan was to stay here for a month and then move on. But I don't know, maybe you know the same thing. You know you come to Taiwan and you just kind of fall in love with the place from the beginning. As soon as you get here, it just kind of captures you. Yeah. And then, yeah, then I came to Taiwan. Decided, oh, I want to stay a little bit longer, so I needed to get a job, started teaching. And then I met my that time wife or girlfriend. We met a girlfriend, we were together, and we got kids together, and you know, that's the whole thing. Oh wow. So yeah, that's how I came to Taiwan. And that's why I'm still here.
SPEAKER_04Wow, yeah, your kids are pretty established in this culture.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04No, they're born and raised here. So you've been here for 19 years total.
SPEAKER_06Uh no, I've been here for 21 years. I've been in Falin for 19 years. Oh, okay. First two years were you in Taipei? Yeah, one year in Taipei, a place called Sanchong. I don't know if you know that. Yeah. Yeah, Sanchong. And it was still very run down. It was terrible. It didn't have MRTs or anything. Yeah, I'd take it. The only place, only way to get to Taipei was bus. It was really dirty and everything. Really didn't like it. And then I moved to Tao Yin, which was a little better than Sanchung, but it's still not good. And then when my son was born, he was born when we lived in Tao Yin. When he was born, we decided no, we don't want to live there. We don't want to bring our kids up in that place. We want to come to Hwalian. So that's why we came here.
SPEAKER_04Oh yeah, Hwalian would be. Yeah, listeners, Hwalian's like way down southeast, right? Beautiful. Yeah. And sort of, I don't know, could you call it an aboriginal area? I believe so.
SPEAKER_06It's definitely an Aboriginal area, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So yeah, so my my wife or my my ex-wife, uh, she's Aboriginal. Oh, for real? Uh, and yeah, yeah, yeah. So we came here for, you know, so that her family can help take care of Brian or the kids.
SPEAKER_03Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_06Just makes it easier for us, yeah. We can have some time alone, or we can go out, and the family is there to take care of the baby and stuff. Yeah. But yeah, they're also the Aboriginal, Amis.
SPEAKER_04Amis. Okay. I haven't met a lot of Amis. Most of the people now are Saisha or Taichu.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that's from that side over there. Over here, the Amis is the definitely the biggest tribe.
SPEAKER_04Really? Yes. The Taya, that's like the biggest tribe in Taiwan, right? I think the Taya?
SPEAKER_06I don't know. I I thought it was the I thought it was the Amis.
SPEAKER_04Really? I don't know. I looked it up a few times because I was looking up the Saisha because I go to like their religious ceremonies, and I was told they're like the most endangered Aboriginal ethnicity in Taiwan. And I think they're actually the second because the Ataya, who used to be headhunters, was like attacking the Saicha for quite some time and almost completely wiped them out until they established some sort of peace treaty, as far as I know.
Hualien Life And Indigenous Communities
SPEAKER_06Okay, but if if yeah, but if they are if you say they're almost like they're endangered, that means they cannot be the biggest.
SPEAKER_04No, no, no. The Saisha. Which is spelled S-A-I. S-A-I-S-I-Y-A-T. That tribe who I spend a lot of time with, I think they're like the second smallest.
SPEAKER_06Like they've almost the movie was made of?
SPEAKER_04Said Bali, that movie? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that movie's about the Taya and the Taya, the they have like three different names, I think.
SPEAKER_06The Sakizaya, isn't it Sakizaia?
unknownI don't know.
SPEAKER_06Sakizaia tribe. Yeah, I think so. A specific tribe. They speak, they speak a language very similar to the Amis tribe, yeah. Really? I think they are yeah, very close related.
SPEAKER_04And Wulai and Wulai, they're all Tayaju or a Tai. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's what they all are. What uh yeah.
SPEAKER_06So here we have the Amis, we have the Teruku, Bunun. Yeah, some I actually met a girl from the Taya tribe. What, last weekend? We had a we had a an event, and she and her boyfriend came to the event and we were talking, and she said she was Taya. And yeah, I think she lives here in Hwalian somewhere. But yeah. Now we have quite a few different tribes here in Hwalian. Wow.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, interesting. So you did an event last weekend?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, last weekend this hostel hosted this event where they tried to well, not trying, they they they want to bring together all the cultures that live in Hwalian. So it doesn't matter whether you are a foreigner like me or if you are Filipino or Indonesian or whatever, if you're from Hwalian, they wanted to bring all the cultures together. So we went to the hostel and I had to go and sell my meat. They they had some of my sausages that the chef prepared, and so they had all these dishes from all different parts of the world, and it was actually really, really good. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Oh, cool. So it wasn't about making money, it was about bringing people together.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah. No, it wasn't about making money at all. Yeah, so they let us, they asked me to go there and go and sell something, and I just made some like sausage rolls and stuff, and they didn't charge us any money, they don't want percentage of it, which normally they do want. Nothing is want us to go there and let the other people experience different cultures. Yeah, it was pretty cool. Wow, man, that's really wholesome. Yeah, yeah. The same the same hostels also they like helping. If anybody goes to volunteer in Guangfu right now, after the typhoon, they give them free accommodation at the hostel. Wow.
SPEAKER_04Where Guangfu just got hit by the typhoon?
SPEAKER_06Yes, Guangfu is a place where just the you know the dam overflew and the whole place overflown and the whole place flooded. It's cra it's crazy over there. Yeah, people's houses are full of mud, and really it's just a huge disaster, yes.
SPEAKER_04I was just in Tainan, and they were all these tattoo artists and DJs, they were all raising money. I feel like it was for that. They were, I was there's kind of a language barrier, but it was for some sort of natural disaster recent that happened recently.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, you know what is what is amazing is people are coming from all over Taiwan just to go and help, just to go and shovel mud out of people's houses. And yeah, my son went to help there. He was there for for whenever he gets free time, he goes there and he shovels mud. And it's it's people go from Tainan on a train, go for a day, go and shovel, and take out all this mud, and then they go back to Tainan and Taipei and Gaoshong, and you know, they come from all over Taiwan. Damn, it's really, really good to see this. Uh, people get together to help out this tiny community.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. That's crazy. Is it still in disarray, like right now? Oh yeah, oh yeah.
SPEAKER_06It's gonna be it's it's still gonna it's still going on for it's gonna go on for a long time, and those people yeah, they've lost everything. Where's it at? And people exactly Guangfu is about an hour from here and And ooh, I don't know which direction now, like to the to the west from here, I think, from where I am. It's like inland, yeah. Central Taiwanish. It's hot spring village.
SPEAKER_04Where you took me?
Flood Disaster In Guangfu
SPEAKER_06Where I took you a little bit further, further on, yeah. A little bit, yeah. The same road, but where I took you was maybe what what did we go like an hour? Maybe not even an hour, a little bit further further that way, yes.
SPEAKER_04You know, I've told some people okay, so that village is about an hour inland from Wali, and and it's now an hour and a half because there's no breach.
SPEAKER_06Oh shit. Yeah, so now you have to take it the long way. Wow.
SPEAKER_04What you can you get there how just but you have to drive yourself.
SPEAKER_06You have to drive yourself. Yeah, or you take a train. You can take a train, the train still goes, but I mean the bridge that connected Hualian to Guangfu, that that's the bridge that just collapsed. Uh the water just completely took it away. Wow. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Man, what a disaster. Wow. That's cool to see people in Taiwan though coming together. Taiwan's a good place.
SPEAKER_06All coming together. You know, my son came, he he he went to water and he came back and he said, you know what? I went there to help, and now I'm starting to think that people aren't really so bad as we think they are. That was pretty good to hear. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04He said that about people in general, like people aren't actually Yeah, as as we think they are.
SPEAKER_06Like people are actually pretty good. There are some good people in this world, and that's that's I think that's what he tried to say.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. More opportunities like that. I mean, that that's a disaster, but it's also an opportunity to expose your humanity. I don't know. I used to do a I used to do a lot of work like that, and then I've kind of just like got caught up in Taiwan with my Taiwanese life, and now I don't really do volunteer work or anything like that before. And I think it's yeah, yeah, it's definitely a good reminder of your human spirit.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah. Especially something like this. I mean, you're helping people, that's really they've they've lost everything. And you and all you do is just go there and just make a bucket, take a shovel, and just take shit out of the house, right?
SPEAKER_04Well, shit. When I was coming to Holly and when I first met you, that earthquake happened. And I remember Home Girls coworker's apartment building, I think, completely collapsed while she was at work.
SPEAKER_06Yes, yes, yes, that's nondo, non nandus apartment. Yeah, luckily she was at work and she wasn't in the apartment block, and she lost everything. She right, I mean that girl lost everything. She didn't even have like her passport, everything, her degrees, and she had to use for work, everything, everything gone. The only thing that she could with what she had was what she took to school that day.
SPEAKER_04Jesus, I can't imagine.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah. So a lot of the people in Guangfu are going through exactly the same thing. I mean, everything they had are lost.
SPEAKER_04Wow. That's kind of funny. Or I mean that's nothing about that's funny, but when you think about how I was talking to you before the interview started about feeling isolated in the mountains or like perceiving that as a problem, but then kind of talking about this, thinking about this kind of replaces that with gratitude, I think, for how much you hate it.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were actually actually the night of the typhoon. I was sitting here and I had a friend over. We was, I was sitting, we were sitting outside, and there was like almost no rain, but walin was no work, no schools. And he said to me, Wow, you know what? Government give us off so easily. I mean, look at this, it's a beautiful day. Seeing it, drinking beer, having fun. I said, Yeah, but it's it's and I and I I didn't know about Guangfu that time yet. And I said, but but it's not for us because the government cannot just say, Oh, listen, but this area you don't you have to go to work, and then the other areas you don't have to go to work. It's the whole Hualin, right? And then the next day we heard heard about this devastation, everything that happened there in in Guangfu, yeah. And then that kind of uh could show him why the government did what it did, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Wow. Yeah, I think that typhoon was just was it three weeks ago-ish?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah, about three weeks ago, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I didn't feel much in the mountains.
SPEAKER_06I didn't feel much here either. I mean, uh like I say, we were sitting and but somebody told me yesterday what happened was from that from that previous big earthquake that you were just talking about, um, where the building fell over. Right, something in the mountains thereby Guangfu happened, like and a natural dam formed in the river, like the the bottom of the river or something became deeper, and this dam formed. And this water was just like damming up, damming up, damming up. So this this new natural dam formed, not not a not a man-made dam, natural dam formed, and then what happened during the typhoon, a piece of the mountain or a big rock or something kind of broke off and plunged into this dam.
SPEAKER_05And it's because of that, the all this water that was in a dam just flew out and it was like a tsunami basically.
SPEAKER_06Wow, like an avalanche of water. Yes, yes, and that is what hit the the township.
SPEAKER_03Huh.
SPEAKER_06It wasn't just the rain, it wasn't just normal rain or anything, it was that you know, from the earthquake before, then the dam formed, and then a piece of rock from the mountain fell off into this dam, and all that water just spilled into this village. So it's a it's a whole chain of events that happened to to bring on this disaster, yeah.
SPEAKER_04So it really started with the earthquake, which was well geez, that when we met, this was this was almost exactly two years ago. Because I met I met the Hwallian friend and on Halloween at Tiger Mountain, which is in what two years?
SPEAKER_05Yes, yes, yes, yes, exactly two years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Time flies, eh?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, but I don't know. Actually, that was only two years ago. Man, the amount of things that have happened in the past two years. That's crazy. I don't know. There's lots of different ways of looking at it. Um, so damn, that's crazy. That's pretty scary about the natural dam being built and then a piece of rock causing like yeah, Jeez, the perfect story.
Volunteering, Resilience, And Perspective
SPEAKER_06And did you hear about like the grandpa and a grandma that died saving their little kids? No, so man, okay, this story brings tears to my eyes every single time. But so this house was getting filled up with mud and shit, right? And the grandpa lifted the grandma up onto his shoulders, and the grandma had this her granddaughter, and so the water just or the mud just came in and buried him, and it just came up and up and up and up, and it buried the grandma, and she just held this this baby up, and it apparently it was just like in a corner of the scene, just the head sticking out, and uh the granddaughter survived. Grandma and grandpa both died saving this little kid.
SPEAKER_04Oh my god, yeah. This was in the uh Guangfu.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and they're one of the houses that just got completely completely flooded.
SPEAKER_04Oh man. Jesus, it sounds like equivalent to like the volcano Vesuvius when that erupted, just annihilating the local community.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah, lucky no, not that many people. I don't even know what it is to count though, but I mean a lot of people died, and it's all a bit character, but a lot more people could have died.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I might look it up here in a minute. Damn, so we're talking about the mudslides. Wow, yeah. That's crazy. Anybody listening in Taiwan, yeah. I'm already thinking about how I could go there to take part and help.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I think anybody can just, you know, just get in the train and the the train stops at Guangfu, you can get off, and you will see a bunch of people. You can just go and volunteer. They will even they will even give you some boots and stuff, and they can give you a spade and a shovel and stuff go and help.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Right on. I just I just drove to Tainan from Taipei. I wonder if that would be further or closer.
SPEAKER_06From Tainan. Tainan is so far from Tai from Hualin. It's so difficult to get to Tainan.
SPEAKER_04I mean, from Taipei, I drove my car to Tainan. It was like four and a half hours.
SPEAKER_06It's about three. Hang on, my phone. Watch it. It's about three three and a half hours. Three hours, yeah, three and a half hours. No, less than three and a half hours, three hours from Taipei to Hawaiian.
SPEAKER_04Right on, for real?
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And if it got nice, the the roads are nice and everything. Another long weekend. On a long weekend, it's gonna be a little bit longer.
SPEAKER_04What? The next long weekend's gonna be a little longer.
SPEAKER_06No, if you drive to Hawaiian on a long weekend, instead of three hours, it's gonna take you it's gonna take you six or seven hours. Oh fuck, man. Yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_06Unless you drive like in the morning. I've got some friends coming. Actually, a bunch of people from Taipei are coming over for camping this weekend. Okay, you can see there's my my car, the kayak is already on. Oh shit. Ready to go. Hell yeah. Yeah, so we're gonna go, we're gonna go down to the beach. There's about 20 or 20 people. We're gonna go camping and take the kayak and we're gonna go spear fishing and and sitting by the beach. Yeah, so I'm taking the kayak and then uh the Hawaiian sling.
SPEAKER_04That's all I have so far. My Aboriginal Baba, he just he just took me spear fishing with like the little rubber band. Is it the same thing?
SPEAKER_06So yeah, but but yeah, yeah, but you have a a tiny one for the rivers.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And then this one, the one I have is about maybe two meters long. Wow. Yeah, but the same, the same idea with the rubber band is how an awesome thing. Yeah. Uh, but and then you just go into the ocean, see how it is. I mean, the ocean might still be a little bit and the visibility might not be so good after the typhoon, but we'll see. I'll try. Anyway, otherwise, I'll just spin it there in a kayak on the ocean.
SPEAKER_04Hell yeah. Dang, man. That's the stuff. All right. So you're uh so you are the bra guy, eh? The bra guy, yes. This is your business, this is your company, this is everything you do.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that's everything. That's that's that's my sole income at the moment.
SPEAKER_04Okay. So what exactly what exactly do you do as the bra guy?
SPEAKER_06Well, I I sell frozen frozen meats and I ship it all over Taiwan. That's just a short version. But it started by making what we call in South Africa built tong. It's similar to American beef jerky.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
Camping, Kayaks, And Spearfishing Plans
SPEAKER_06The the process of making it is a little bit different. It's it's not there's no it's not processed, it's not smoked or anything like beef jerky. We just kind of marinate it and air dry it, so it just hangs and dries. So I started making biltong for myself basically. So because I was in Taiwan. Yeah. Biltong comes from deer. No, it comes from any kind of meat, actually. Biltong is it's it doesn't matter. I do I use beef. Ah, okay. So most of the built on comes from beef, and then if you're a hunter in South Africa and you can get we don't get deer, we have antelope in South Africa. It's not deer. But yeah, antelope or wild, any wild game, we you we make built on too, yes.
SPEAKER_04Okay, so built on is not specific to animal, it's more specific to like flavor or style of like preparing.
SPEAKER_06It's the way you prepare it. Is it that's botong, yeah. So the way you prepare it is basically you put the meat into your spice mix, your salt and vinegar, and you leave it there overnight to marinate in that, and then you hang it up and you air dry it. So it just dries in South Africa. In a place like what I'm saying here right now, we'll just kind of hang it up on the ceiling, and we'll have fans on it, and it will just dry outside because the air is so dry. But here in Taiwan, it's a little bit more difficult. Oh, it's quite humid, it's quite humid, right?
SPEAKER_04It's not dry at all.
SPEAKER_06Yes, yes, yes, yes. So that's the that's the biggest challenge. I have to keep the room sealed off, the AC full blast, and a dehumidifier in the room all the time. So uh otherwise.
SPEAKER_04So in South Africa you could do this outside, but in Taiwan, due to the humidity, you have to do it inside in a controlled environment.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah. I've tried to do it here without the air conditioning and and without the humidifier before. When I just moved to Taiwan, I tried to do that here, it just didn't work. Even in the coldest winter, it didn't work. There was always a little bit of mold on the meat afterwards.
SPEAKER_03Oh shit.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. So the process is a little bit difficult.
SPEAKER_04So you just said that you put it so you cut strips of any animal. It could be antelope. For you, traditionally, it's cow. Is there like a specific part of the body you're gonna be cutting this meat from?
SPEAKER_06Well, for me right now, in South Africa, they like to use the silver side, silver side steak. It's it's got a nice big fat layer, and so we like the the meat with the fat. And I know beef jerky is normally very lean, there's no fat on it. So we South Africans we like we like the fat on the meat. But unfortunately, here in Taiwan, you cannot I cannot buy it, or if I can buy it, it's way too expensive to make building. Meat is already so expensive here. So I use I use the the cheapest uh uh piece of big chunk of meat that I can get, which is chuck. So I make mine of chuck. From where? Chuck Chuck Chuck, ooh, from the from the back.
SPEAKER_04No, no, I mean Chuck, like from what country do you source it?
From Biltong To A Meat Business
SPEAKER_06Oh from from what country? Hang on, I need to okay. Chuck is from oh, the the meter I use is from Australia.
SPEAKER_04Oh, right on. Anything's better than the US?
SPEAKER_06Well, no, no, I I wouldn't say so because I do sell T bone steak. I do sell T-bone steaks as well, and I prefer the US T-bone steak. I don't even sell the the Australian or New Zealand T-bones, it's just not it doesn't compare. The price is way higher, the US, but the US T-bone steaks are much better. Wow. But for Biltong, for Biltong specifically, because it's dried meat, you don't need good meat to do that. You can use you can use any kind of meat. It will the the toughness, it won't change. Huh. So if I uh one of my friends gave me he had a restaurant and he would get get like prime rib eye and stuff, and sometimes it will get freezer burn, then it will give me all that like very high level meats to make bothone. And I did it, but it you know it tastes exactly the same. So it doesn't matter if you're using high-quality meat or low quality meat, doesn't matter, it's the same. Because it's all dried out, huh? Yeah, but the fat ratio, and then maybe if there's too much sinew inside, then it's also not good. You want meat without the sinew.
SPEAKER_04Sinew is like tough, tough father.
SPEAKER_06Like the ligaments, ligaments, the ligaments and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04I like that stuff, the ligaments and the tendons. That's what I like. I've been making my own bone broth. Yeah. I've been going to my butcher, and then I'm just I've been getting the liver. I found a good bitch, a good bitcher, a good butcher who gets his pig, he gets his pig from palliant. They're all black pigs that live outside. Okay. Order the heart, the heart, the liver, and meihua ro mehua ro, which is like shorter cuts, and then and then I'm like, just give me all the bones, man. I want to make bone broth. So I've been getting like the femur bones. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Oh, nice, nice, nice, nice.
SPEAKER_04Good shit.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. I I I also sell sell like the the beef bone marrows, like the I remember seeing them on your page a long time ago. Like this. Yeah, and it got marrow like this thick inside. And man, I also love that stuff. Just put it in the oven. You can make bone broth of that, but I just I just put it in the oven for like 20 minutes and I just put on toast.
unknownReally?
SPEAKER_06You're gonna eat that much because it's it's just so rich and so it's just cholesterol. I just like I just like slip it out of the bone. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's good. I really like that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I I made some bone broth with the bone marrow, and then I made some with the tendon. But it would the big difference was with the marrow, the bones have a shitload of oil. And so you gotta let all the oil coagulate afterwards. But with the tendon, you got almost no oil, so it's a lot less clean up afterwards, and it's a lot, it's a lot cleaner process.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's very true.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, no, the bone marrow is definitely very oily.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So you said when you do the bil tongue, the first thing you do is you let it sit in what'd you say, spices and vinegar and sugar overnight?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, it's not sugar. We don't use sugar. So the the main things, the main things, I'm not gonna give you my recipes, but the main things, and and you can find this on the internet anywhere, but is salt. It's very important. It's a lot of salt in there, vinegar. Yeah, salt and vinegar is basically the two things, but then we use pepper and coriander. Is coriander is actually a very not the leaves, but the seeds. It's very traditional for African. So a lot of just a basic built-on recipe will be salt, pepper, coriander. That's it. And then You sprinkle the spices over it, then you also put some vinegar over it, and the salt in the vinegar kind of cures it. Where I think beef jerky, you guys use the pink salt to cure the meat. What did you think of that? I have no idea.
SPEAKER_04There would just be like it was seasonal, and I remember there's always like too many deer because we if we were driving our cars, we're hitting deer, so like there's too many deer, so people need to go out and hunt the deer. It was such a it seemed like such a flawed fucking logic to me. I remember thinking like we're supposed to kill the deer because they're causing car accidents, but like people are causing way bigger problems. Shouldn't we be hunting people? I remember like suggesting that in high school.
SPEAKER_06Um probably not a popular.
SPEAKER_04I don't know what they do. I reckon they just throw it in, they just season it and throw it in a dehydrator.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah. They're also maybe I also I'm not very I don't really know how to make beef jerky exactly, but I do know there's smoking involved or dehydration, but they're also yeah, they use the the pink salt, the curing salt for their meat. But I think pink salt.
SPEAKER_04So pink salt, pink salt is a curing salt.
SPEAKER_06Not the not the pink salt that you think about, not the pink salt that you can buy in Costco and stuff like that, like the mil, you know, the Himalayan pink salt. Not that. It's we call it pink salt, but it's some kind of chemical. Oh, really? But but I'm not I can go in and get a half a bottle actually that I that I have here that I use if I do make pastrami. Really? Check what it is exactly. Yeah. If I do make pastrami, then I do use the pink salt because I mean I do it exactly the same way as Canadians and Americans do it. But we don't do we don't smoke, we don't really smoke meat in South Africa. We don't do the curing stuff, yeah.
Biltong vs. Jerky: Methods And Challenges
SPEAKER_04You don't do the curing. You don't do the curing or the smoking?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, South Africa's not very big into that. So I the curing and the smoking I've all learned from my American and Canadian friends here. Wow.
SPEAKER_04And so in terms of curing, what curing do you do? Or is it just like the vinegar and salt you use to prepare the biltong?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, so for the biltong, it's just the salt and the vinegar is what cures our meat.
SPEAKER_04You wouldn't do that in South Africa. Do what? You said that like the curing and the smoking that you've learned, you learn from Canadian-American friends here in Taiwan. Right?
SPEAKER_06I will definitely do it in South Africa. I will definitely go and do it in South Africa because it's something completely new, and I think uh South Africans are very open, but it's just not part of our culture.
SPEAKER_04So, how do you so how do you do build built on traditionally in South Africa?
SPEAKER_06Okay, so I think what happened was built on came when when people landed in South Africa and they wanted to, we we call it the Great Trek from the south of South Africa to the north, where people moved in the ox wagons, and then they were hunting and they had all this meat, and they had to kind of make this meat last. So they cut it into strips, and then they they would hang it up, hang it up in the ox in the wagons, and they can eat it later. So that's how they preserved their meat, to move, and that's where built on comes from from hunting. So originally it's from not from actually cattle, like cows and stuff, or maybe they did when the cows die, they they would slaughter them and then eat as much as they can, and the rest they have to make both. But it's from that and from wild animals they hunt and stuff, right? Uh yeah, so they would they would they would salt it, vinegar. I don't know the old, old, old, how long what they did in the old days, but it was normally salt, vinegar, and then uh hang it up and air dry it.
SPEAKER_04So what do what do salt and vinegar do to meat specifically?
SPEAKER_06Oh wow, specifically I don't know what it does, but it just stops it from rotting, basically. Right.
SPEAKER_04This originated in a time before fridges, right? Before all the things we need to preserve food.
SPEAKER_06Before before electricity, even yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_06And I mean, I mean, that's the same, that's the same where sausages come from in Italy, where people traveled and they had to preserve the sausages. And you know, you have these Italian sausages, it's basically the same thing as dried sausages. So yeah, all these things that we have all over the world come from back then, when we didn't have electricity, when we didn't have fridges, and we had to preserve all our meats and stuff, right? And the same same with beef jerky, it's the same thing. They probably had different ways of making it back then. Now you know it's all commercialized, easier. You've got all these fancy salts and stuff that you can use, but before it probably wasn't that way.
SPEAKER_04Ah, so this pink salt is kind of like an almost a newer invention that expedites the process or makes the curing a little bit easier.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I I think so. I think so. I know there was a time in South Africa where we used saltpeter to for our biltong.
SPEAKER_03Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_06And then it became yeah, you couldn't use it anymore because if you use too much, people will die. It's like it's poison if you use too much. And I mean you just put this in a in a just a regular guy's hands. Okay, well, let's make some biltong. It's easy to kill somebody. So I I remember, I remember as a kid, like a young kid, I remember we use saltpeter in our biltong.
SPEAKER_04Uh-huh. I know when I I know when I make bone broth, I put apple cider vinegar at the very start because that kind of helps break the proteins down, right? Yes. It's an acid, so it just breaks things down. Yes. And salt, I don't really know except for the it would pull moisture out, right?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, that's maybe it's maybe that's what the salt does.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. My neighbor at Wulai, he just buys big old chunks of beef and then just coats them with salt and sits them on a drying rack and just sits it in his fridge, and he's like curing meat. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's like uh dried, dried meat. Yeah, yeah. A lot of people, that's actually a really good way to do it.
SPEAKER_04Really? Yeah. So for somebody that wants to get into it but doesn't really have any idea, you can just get a chunk of meat, kind of like give it a salt bath almost, and put it on uh like a metal rack in the fridge.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, put it in your fridge, yeah. Yeah, it's called aging because you can put it in the fridge for like weeks. Oh yeah, that's aging, aging your meat. Yeah, that's also a thing that I really want to get into. I I'm really, really interested in that and I want to do it, but I just don't have the fridge space for that. Yeah. Yeah. I do that with my with my T-bone steaks and stuff. If I do T-bones or if I do steaks, but now I'm gonna barbecue. What I do is I vacuum seal it, and I'll put some either like mango or pineapple or something on the steaks, and I'll just put it in the fridge in a vacuum-sealed bag though, so there's no air coming in, and I would leave it in the fridge for about two weeks, and not frozen or anything, it's in the freezer, but that's just for myself. No, no salt, nothing, just like that, and it becomes this brown, like brown and brown piece of meat, and then I just put it in a grill and grill it, and it is super super tender. Wait because, like I say, the frozen start breaking down.
SPEAKER_04You take the T-bone, you put it in a bag, so vacuum seal it, and you put the whole piece of fruit in there, or you like squeeze the fruit juice into the bag?
SPEAKER_06No, no, no. I would you don't even have to put the fruit. I put the fruit in there for extra flavor. You don't even have to put the fruit in there. A lot of my dad, for instance, he's the one who taught me this trick. He didn't put any fruit on it. He just put the steak in and leave it there for two weeks in the fridge, and it becomes this yeah, this brown, like I said, it's brown, dark brown color. Almost it almost looks like it's gonna it's rotting, but it's not wait.
SPEAKER_04Would he would he vacuum seal it or he just like threw it at the fridge? Yes.
SPEAKER_06No vacuum seal. Vacuum seal.
Cuts, Sourcing, And Fat Preference
SPEAKER_04Okay, so he would just vacuum seal it, no salt, no olive oil, nothing like that.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, no, nothing, nothing like that. And you put all the spices and things on when you do actually do your your grilling.
SPEAKER_04Okay, but you're actually you're not putting the whole fruit in there, but you're like squeezing a mango or something into the bag.
SPEAKER_06I'm putting slice, I'll I'll slice the mango, like a mango slice, and put it like on the meat. Okay, yeah. And that's like mango and and beef goes pretty well together. It's a really good combination.
SPEAKER_04Damn, I have never heard that. That's crazy. Wow, mango steak? Hell yeah. And you can do that for two weeks.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, I usually do mine for for I'm a little bit scared, but I do mine for a week, no, two weeks. You can do it for a long time, but because it looks like the meat is going, it's rotting. Yeah. And I'm always so scared I'm gonna waste my T-bones. It's like, oh okay, it's time to bribe. Time time for a bride. We have to go right now.
SPEAKER_04And listeners, a bride is what South Africans call a barbecue. I'm guessing you didn't know that, because I didn't know that.
SPEAKER_06You didn't know that. I just hit Bri.
SPEAKER_04I just thought I just hit Bri like a few times. I didn't know it like 10 years ago. I'm telling you, man, we're dumb people, dude. We are fucking dumb people. Yeah. And from the US.
SPEAKER_06No, but nobody knows, nobody knows what bri means. And unless South Africa, unless you're South African, you won't know what bries only in South Africa.
SPEAKER_04That's true.
SPEAKER_06So we're the only people who call a barbecue a bri. And then we are so adamant about it. Like, yeah, you cannot call it a barbecue. It's a brick Yeah.
SPEAKER_04My first friends in Taiwan were South African. My first scooter came from South Africans, and they I remember them being pretty firm about us having a bri on the beach. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, we're not having a barbecue, we're having a brick. Yeah. Yeah. That's where the name the bri guy comes from, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. My neighbor, he gave me a piece of beef, like high quality beef from Thomas Meats, which I put on the rack, covered in salt. But I think it sat for like a month, and then I tried to cook it, and I was like, I called him, I was like, man, I don't know. I don't think it tastes right. He's like, Oh, maybe it sat too long. I'm like, all right, so it can't sit too long, huh? I wasn't really sure.
SPEAKER_06Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Oh yeah, yeah. No, it can't it can definitely sit too long. Yeah, it can also it can be many different factors. It can be many, maybe the temperature wasn't low enough in your fridge. You know, you opened up open a fridge the whole time, and you know, bacteria and stuff comes into a fridge. If it wasn't open.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. You want the temperature really low if you're I mean, is this called curing or aging? If you're taking a piece of beef, for example, covering it with salt on a rack.
SPEAKER_06If you're just putting it in the fridge and you leave it there for like a few weeks or so, that's that's aging. That's aging.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And curing would be more like what you do with built on with the vinegar plus the salt.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, curing is is I think it's well, I might be wrong, but I think curing is more is a faster, faster process where you put like kind of chemicals and stuff, like the salt and stuff, and and that kind of cures the meat and makes it so it doesn't rot if you put it on the smoker. Because if you smoke smoke meat, you smoke it for on like 50 degrees Celsius. I don't know what is that in uh Fahrenheit though. Ah fuck it, Celsius is fine. But 50 degrees Celsius is also the perfect temperature for bacteria. So if you're gonna smoke something at 50 degrees Celsius for 24 hours, the chance of it getting you know bacteria and and shit coming into that meat is really good. That's why you want the curing. So that the meat doesn't get uh doesn't spoil while you while you smoke it.
SPEAKER_04So traditionally you should cure some meat before you smoke it if you're doing a long like 24 hour smoke.
SPEAKER_06If you do like a long smoke, I would say if you do a few hours smoke and it's like a cold smoke, not you know, under 100 degrees Celsius, then I would definitely uh suggest you cure it. What's a cold smoke? Like a cold smoke is if it's oh like under between I think like under 60 degrees Celsius is considered cold smoking. If you go higher than 60 degrees Celsius, yeah. I don't know what is that in Fahrenheit. So like boiling temperature is 100 degrees Celsius.
SPEAKER_0460 degrees Celsius is 140 Fahrenheit.
SPEAKER_06Okay. Fahrenheit doesn't make any sense to me.
SPEAKER_02So you can say any number, I would that seem pretty hot to me.
SPEAKER_06140 Fahrenheit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that is that is under that's under boiling temperature. So you want to keep it under you want to keep it under 60 actually. Like when I do mine, I've got this big green egg, they call it, and I always put mine on 50 degrees. And I smoke my if I do pastrami, I smoke it for two hours in smoker under on 50 degrees, and I make sure it doesn't go over 50 degrees. Under 50 degrees is fine, never over. So less than 50 degrees, and then after two hours and the smoke, the smoke is just for the flavor, and then I actually put it in the steamer for another two hours, or until the temperature in the meat is is what do I want? Like 90, 90 degrees Celsius.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Wow, you smoke it for two hours and then you put it in the steamer for one or two hours?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, for as long as it takes to get the internal temperature for the meat. Wow.
SPEAKER_04And then this is like pastrami that you sell, for example.
Salt, Vinegar, And Safe Curing
SPEAKER_06I used to do that, but it is takes I used to sell it, but it just takes so much time because the but that actually the pastrami I need to cure for three weeks, 21 days.
SPEAKER_03Huh?
SPEAKER_0621 days that I put it in my fridge in wet marinade with the curing salt, you know, pink salt we've been talking about. Uh so I've got this this whole mix of things in the water in the brine, and it has to be covered, and then I put it in my fridge for 21 days, then afterwards I take it out, I have to dry it completely, kind of wash it off, and then I put like a dry rub on it. Then I put it in a smoker for two hours to smoke to get that smoky flavor, and then in the steamer for another two or three hours, and then it has to cool down. Then I have to slice it, then pack it, and then sell it. Damn. So it takes me a long time, and then usually by the time you know it's I wait for 21 days. So usually when I do the smoking, I invite a lot of people over. We have a barbecue, and then I smoke the pastrami, and we have a party. It's like a pastrami festival. Damn. Wow. And then, yeah, but then then you know it's really expensive to make it, and I have to make the price pretty high as well. It sells pretty fast, but it takes me, like I said, 21, 21 days to just to cure it, and then I have to find time to to grill it. So yeah, like 25 days to make the pasrami.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that is a lot of work. So you don't keep that regularly on your menu now?
SPEAKER_06I've actually stopped doing it completely because it's just because you I have to buy this whole brisket, and if I want to make it worthwhile, I have to buy three of them, and that takes up so much space in my freezers or my fridges, but I cannot store anything else in there. So it's it's really really difficult. And the amount of work and then follow the the price I sell it, it's just not yeah, I don't think it's worth it. Yeah. But it was it was very popular.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, is beef brisket, is brisket only from beef?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, beef brisket.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, uh yeah.
SPEAKER_05Well, pastrami is beef brisket. Okay.
SPEAKER_04So brisket is only a cut you can get from a pig.
SPEAKER_06No, from a cow. From a pig. Yeah, from a cow.
SPEAKER_04So the pastrami, that's interesting, dude. Me growing up, like my memories of pastrami is like really shitty packaged meat on white bread with mustard, yeah, pastrami mustard sandwiches. That was my only yeah, but now it can really be like a gourmet meat, right?
SPEAKER_06Yes, it it turned into a gourmet meat, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's it's super expensive. I think maybe pastrami before the same thing. That there was something that they made to preserve it. It was yeah, uh, yeah, and it just turned into this really pastrami is also a thing that we don't do in South Africa at all. I've never even heard of pastrami until I came here, and then my Canadian friend he taught me how to make the pastrami.
SPEAKER_04No shit. So your Canadian friends here had a had a pretty big influence on you and getting into like the meat business.
SPEAKER_06No, no, I got into the meat business, like I said, because I wanted to make it for myself. But yeah, they do. I mean, even Taiwanese, everybody had a big influence because even my botong is not the same recipe I would make in South Africa. For the taste, people in Taiwan don't eat as much salt as people in South Africa eat. So my botong here has to be a lot less salty. When I first started making it, and I started I gave it to people to eat. Everybody was like, oh no, it's too salty, it's too salty. And then even for me, after a while, getting accustomized to its Taiwan's taste and not eating as much salt as I used to, so I had to reduce the salt in the botong. So yeah, the culture definitely did have an influence on everything. Yeah. Even my sausages that I make. Yeah, it's it's not the same as South African. It's similar, but I had to adjust for people living in Taiwan, not living in South Africa.
SPEAKER_04Right. So you said that. You j you just said that you got into this business initially for yourself.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, it wasn't I didn't never planned for this to be a business. I did this because like I said, I came to Taiwan, couldn't find Botong, I didn't know where to buy Botong. I'm sure there were people making Botong, but I didn't know where to find them and where to buy, so I made myself. And all my friends come and they want some more, they want some botong, and I never have enough for myself. So then every every winter I make again. And because I didn't have the the rooms and the all the equipment set up yet, so I just make it made in the winter. Next winter come and I make a little bit more, still not enough. Everybody takes and I only have a little bit left. And then one year I decided I'm gonna make a lot. Well, I thought that time it was a lot, it was wasn't a lot at all. But for me, for me it was like, oh I'm gonna make this a huge batch. We went to this festival, the sapphoffest, and we sold it there. We thought we're never gonna there's no way we're gonna sell it out. And it sold out in a few hours. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So then I just thought, okay, well, this is something that you know people want. Uh so I started with the botong, and then and I people want to have we call it drills, which is dried sausage, it's the same as the botong, but it's in a sausage form.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
Aging, Tenderizing, And Mango-Steak Trick
SPEAKER_06So people asked for that, but I didn't to do that I had to buy a sausage machine, like a make a sausage maker. So I bought a tiny little machine, I started making the drill wars, and I decided, well, I have the machine, why not just make the regular South African sausages as well? And sell that, like raw sausages that people can actually put in a bright. And that's how I kind of kind of expanded. And then people said, Oh, you've got Bottom, you've got this. Do you have lamp chops? Okay, well, let's go see if I can find any lamp jobs. And I went to the market, talked to people, and oh, okay, yeah, I can find lamp chops. So I buy in bulk lamp jobs, back it up and uh sell the lamp jobs. Oh, do you have bone marrow bones? Bone marrow. Yeah, well, let me and I go and call people again. You know, that's how that's how it's it started slowly becoming a business. It I never planned for this. When I when I when I had this, I mean I had a my own gram school before. Oh shit. So that was my that was my that was my initial business. And then slowly this kind of thing took over and the demand just got higher, higher, higher, and I just kind of focused on the meat business and let the gram school go. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. And then it was just like this is falling apart, and I'm like, okay, well it's just it's like the gram school wasn't doing anything. It did well until I started the building business, and I just focused on the building, or the meat business. And it's just like I said, okay, well, this isn't doing anything anymore and to close this thing. Yeah, and then COVID came and when COVID came actually, that was when a big change happened. Because two things happened was I already had this meat business established. People couldn't come to my school, and then the government kind of shut us down. They said we have to close the school for two weeks. And then we had to do like online classes and stuff, and I just didn't want to do it. At the same time, people were scared, and people would like I call it panic buy. They would just buy a lot of meat because they were scared of being quarantined and they weren't having any meat and stuff, right?
SPEAKER_04That's good for you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, so that that's where the school closed for two weeks, and then it was all of a sudden I'm just so busy with the meat I couldn't keep up. And then I just never opened a school again. I said, Well, I'm not. Wow.
SPEAKER_04So how long's the how long's the meat business been up and running? Well, three years minimum, right?
SPEAKER_06No, it's been it's been more than that. It's been maybe five years now. Yeah. So COVID was three or four, three or four years ago. I started before COVID. I started before COVID. I think it was about four years ago COVID, if I'm not mistaken.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_06And then shortly before COVID. Yeah, maybe about a year before COVID. But it was slow starting. It wasn't really a business, it was just like, you know, I I wanted to do all this stuff also make for myself, but I don't want to just give it away for free. So and then yeah, it just kind of ended up becoming a business.
SPEAKER_04Oh yeah. That's awesome. That's great. That's the the right way to do something. Start for yourself like I'm doing with these mushroom extracts and coffee kombucha, and definitely the collagen cubes making and freezing those. That is like I'm super amped about that.
SPEAKER_06Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Nice. Yeah, man. You have to get some of that and try it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I mean, I just had my first success. I got like a Ziploc bag full of like 15 cubes. I'm like, shit, this this works, man. Flavored it with some money, and I'm like, these are actually pretty nice. Like, and I got like three. How do you how do you I didn't eat it? Well, how do you how do you do it? I don't really know. A couple people are like, can you just can you put it in a single serving? So I'm like, yeah, I think I can do that. And now I don't know. My thinking was like, take two cubes, throw it in your blender with your protein shake or whatever shake. And then my buddy's like, Can I mix it with some eggs while I'm cooking them? I'm like, that's kind of weird, but I guess you could do that. I guess you could do anything, really. Yeah, you could throw it in a pot and make soup with it. You could do anything.
SPEAKER_06But um, hell yeah, that sounds really interesting.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, for sure. Especially if I can get the calories counted and like really because when you're buying collagen at Costco or in a vitamin form, you're always getting like type one, but you're not getting like type three and type five, the shit that's really beneficial for your joints and your ligaments and stuff. And so by using the femur bone, I really know I'm getting all those different types of collagen.
SPEAKER_06Oh, awesome, awesome.
SPEAKER_04And you you've been eating it, you've been taking it yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a big fucking believer in bone broth. Yo, we're about to run out, we're about to run out of time here. I feel like I'd keep going, but this is about to cut off right now. So we're gonna have to stop recording.
SPEAKER_06Okay, yeah, yeah. That was awesome. Yeah, yeah, did it feel like two hours? Two hours or what?
SPEAKER_04Uh I think almost with our little break in the middle. But yeah, maybe just about.
SPEAKER_06That was awesome.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, man, for sure. I could definitely see doing this again. And I yeah, I still have more questions for you. All right, awesome. All right, well, enjoy your homies coming down to the uh sphere fishing, man.
SPEAKER_01Dad, I don't know what you might feel big, but the things that I saw when my psyche was really. I experienced a lot of pain as a child. See if you win the friend, it's so wild. Never read it, never read it.
SPEAKER_00I'm looking back at everything that we've been through. I'm really sorry that I held it against you. This is life, we all gotta do it. No one's perfect mistakes. It's the only way when I look back, I remember the past. Smell of the leather and the beard of you with the beard, the road with the bike. Smile of the ones that you love in the fire every night. Everything wanna come home and give you a hudge. Are you gonna stop me and have a little punch? Yo, brave father, you have given it with time. Every single time that I watch. Picked me up when I was ready to die. We got issues and we both touched up and even then how it should love us.