Snack

Biltong

Name: Biltong
Prep time: 45 min
Total time: 120 h 45 min
Yield: 10
Cuisine: South African
Ingredients: 2 kg beef topside or rump, in one piece; 250 ml brown or cider vinegar; 60 g coarse sea salt; 40 g coriander seeds; 15 g black peppercorns; 20 g brown sugar; 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Beef in strips, steeped in vinegar, seasoned with toasted coriander and coarse salt and air-dried for three to six days. No fire involved — and still the most South African thing here.

Biltong is older than any recipe on this site. The method — vinegar, salt, coriander, air — comes from a time before refrigeration and keeps meat for weeks. The coriander is no accident: the Cape sat on the spice route to Asia.

Prep: 45 min
Marinating: 1 d
Drying: 4 d
On the fire: —

Sliced biltong: dark and dry on the outside, still red within — Schalkb2 · CC BY-SA 4.0

When it goes on

Right at the end

Pudding in the last of the heat — or something that needs no fire at all.

Equipment: nothing

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

Cut the meat

Cut the beef into strips about two to two and a half centimetres thick — along the grain, not across. Cut across, biltong tears when sliced instead of peeling.
Toast and grind the coriander

Toast coriander and pepper in a dry pan until fragrant, then grind coarsely and sieve out the husks. Coarse means visible pieces, not powder.
Steep it

Put the strips in a non-metallic bowl, pour over the vinegar and refrigerate for 24 hours, turning two or three times. The vinegar is half the preservation.
Season

Lift the meat out, blot it briefly but do not rub it dry. Mix salt, sugar, coriander, pepper and bicarbonate and roll the strips in it on all sides.
Hang it

Hang on hooks or string so the strips do not touch. Ideal is 21 to 24 °C at 40 to 60 percent humidity with steady air movement — a fan on its lowest setting is enough.
Dry for three to six days

Biltong is done when it has lost about half its weight. Moist in the middle means three to four days; dry through means six to ten. The texture should suggest a leather belt, not a plank.
Slice

Slice thinly across the grain. In thick pieces biltong is chewing work.

Tips

Humidity is the only real enemy. Above 60 percent it moulds before it dries — then you want a biltong box with a fan and a light bulb.
Weigh rather than guess: weigh the strips before hanging and write it down. At 50 percent weight loss it is ready, whatever the calendar says.
Malt vinegar is common; brown or cider vinegar is milder and lets the coriander through.
It keeps for weeks in a paper bag at room temperature. In plastic it sweats and spoils.

Biltong is not a snack but a preservation method from the days before refrigeration, and it never went away in South Africa. Four things make it: lean meat, vinegar, salt and coriander.

The difference from American jerky is fundamental. Jerky is sliced thin, seasoned and dried, often with heat. Biltong is cut thick, steeped in vinegar and dried in cool moving air. The result is softer inside, darker outside, and tastes of meat rather than of marinade.

The only delicate part is the air. Too damp means mould; too dry means a hard crust with moisture trapped beneath it. Between 40 and 60 percent humidity and a little draught — that is all it takes.

Where it comes from

Where the word comes from: Afrikaans · Literally „from *bil* (rump) and *tong* (tongue, here: strip)“ The name describes the shape of the strip, not the animal.

Biltong is often told as a Voortrekker invention. That holds for the vinegar and for the word, not for the method. Cutting meat into strips, salting it and hanging it in the air was practice at the Cape before the first Dutch East India Company ship dropped anchor in 1652; the accounts trace biltong explicitly back to that older preservation.

What the settlers added was vinegar — and with it an acidity that drops the pH at the surface. Together with the salt that leaves bacteria nowhere to grow, without any heat being needed. That is exactly where it parts company with jerky, which is sweetened and heated to at least 71 degrees: biltong is never cooked.

The coriander came with the same spice trade that shaped boerewors. Toasted it tastes nutty rather than soapy — the same rule applies here as there.

What is different today is the place. At the Cape a draughty spot at an open window does it in the dry months; in Europe it does not, because there the humidity is the problem. That is why a drying box there is not a toy but a requirement.

Sources for this section