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Meat · In Afrikaans: Springbokrugstring

Bacon-wrapped springbok loin

Venison loin marinated overnight in red wine, wrapped in bacon and seared over full coals. The leanest meat on this site — and the one where two minutes too long ruins everything.

The springbok is South Africa's national animal and, at the same time, an ordinary cut in the supermarket. The texture is finer than lamb, the taste faintly peppery and only mildly gamey. The catch is that game has almost no intramuscular fat. What is a buffer in beef is simply absent here — hence the bacon, and hence the short cooking time.

Prep
25 min
Marinating
12 hr
On the fire
25 min
Serves
4

How hot

Full heat

You can hold your hand over the grid for 2 seconds · ≈ 230 °C+

Every coal stage explained →

Which wood

Kameeldoring

subtle, dry

More on this wood →

When it goes on

First on the fire

Goes on first, while the coals are at their hottest — steaks, thick chops, and anything that sits in a pot for hours.

Equipment: Grid

This line

Khoikhoi and Sanbefore 1652Trekboers and Voortrekkers1652 to about 1900

Meat straight over the coals, drying as a way to keep it, game rather than slaughter stock.

Method

  1. Make the marinade

    Soften the onion and garlic in a little oil, let it cool and stir into the rest of the marinade ingredients.

  2. Marinate overnight

    Put the loin in a freezer bag, pour in the marinade, press the air out and seal. Overnight in the fridge. Twelve hours is enough; beyond twenty-four it goes mushy rather than tender.

  3. Out of the fridge three hours ahead

    Bring the meat up to room temperature in good time. A cold centre takes too long at the fire, and that is exactly when the outside dries out.

  4. Wrap it

    Pat the meat dry, lay the rosemary sprigs along it and wrap with overlapping bacon rashers. Pin with toothpicks. The bacon is a fat substitute, not a flavouring.

  5. Sear all round

    Over full coals — two seconds on the hand test — sear two minutes on each of the four sides until the bacon crisps.

  6. Move to the cool side

    Move it to the empty half of the grid and finish for about fifteen minutes, turning once. Core temperature 55–58 °C. Without a thermometer, press it: yielding is raw, springy is medium, firm is too late.

  7. Rest for ten minutes

    Off the grid onto a board, loosely covered with foil, ten minutes. Only then slice across the grain, finger-thick, and salt.

Tips

  • Game is never cooked through. Past 62 °C at the core it is tough, and there is no going back.
  • Resting matters more with lean meat than with anything else. Ten minutes is the minimum.
  • Kameeldoring beats rooikrans here — the coals last longer and fluctuate less, and with game, steadiness is everything.
  • It works without bacon, but then brush with oil and take another two minutes off.

Game has been missing from this site, and that was a gap: in South Africa springbok, kudu and wildebeest sit in the ordinary supermarket chiller, often cheaper than beef.

What sets it apart from everything else is fat — or rather, the absence of it. A beef steak forgives two minutes too long because the fat inside melts and keeps it moist. Springbok has none of that. Two minutes over, and tender meat becomes leather.

Hence the bacon and hence the two zones. The bacon supplies the fat the meat lacks, and the cool zone lets the centre warm through without cooking the outside any further. Together they turn the hardest cut on the grid into one of the best.

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Serves
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