Biltong is not jerky: South Africa's dried meat never meets heat
Ask a South African about beef jerky and you may get a lecture. Biltong, their cured meat snack, is soaked in vinegar and spices and then simply hung in cool, dry air for days. Jerky is heated to at least 71 °C. That single difference changes the texture, the thickness and, for many expats, the taste of home.
The name joins the Afrikaans words bil, buttock, and tong, strip. A popular story says 17th-century Dutch pioneers tucked raw meat under their saddles to be salted by horse sweat and tenderised by riding, but that is doubtful, since horses were not widely used until later colonisation. Some think settlers simply adopted a local indigenous way of preserving meat.
Without fridges, and with game plentiful, curing was essential. Meat from animals as large as the eland was treated with vinegar and spices, hung for a fortnight in winter when cold air slowed bacteria and mould, and stored in cloth bags that let air circulate. Vinegar's acidity blocks the bacterium behind botulism, and the Dutch brought pepper, coriander and cloves, all with antimicrobial properties. A 2017 Portuguese study found coriander oil killed 10 of 12 bacterial strains tested.
Biltong fed Boer commandos on the open veld during the Second Boer War, and some South African soldiers on the Western Front in the First World War had it posted from home. Today it is mostly beef, prized cuts being silverside or topside, though kudu, springbok, ostrich and even fish versions exist. Strips are usually around 25 millimetres wide, far thicker than jerky, and it is rarely smoked or sweetened.
About 200 grams of beef shrinks to 100 grams of biltong, and some versions reach 67% protein. It is sold wet, medium or dry, fatty or lean, or as thin sticks called stokkies, and turns up in stews, muffins and crisps. South African communities have carried it to Britain, Australia, Canada and beyond, though the United States demands a South African inspection certificate for imports.
Source: Biltong
