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Side · In Afrikaans: Biltongslaai

Biltong salad

Rocket, avocado, feta and mango with thinly sliced biltong and a honey-mustard vinaigrette. Ten minutes of work, and the biltong comes ready-sliced out of the packet.

Biltong is air-dried beef seasoned with coriander and vinegar, and in South Africa it is an everyday product, not a delicatessen item. In a salad it plays the part bacon or parmesan play elsewhere — salt, umami and bite at once.

Prep
20 min
On the fire
—
Serves
6
Effort
easy
A salad of diced avocado and mango with red onion and chilli
Shark2025 · CC BY-SA 4.0

When it goes on

Done beforehand

Made in the kitchen. On the table before you light up.

Equipment: nothing

This line

Trekboers and Voortrekkers1652 to about 1900Made at the Capelate 20th century to today

The three-legged pot, sausage as a way of keeping meat, bread without an oven.

Method

  1. Mix the vinaigrette

    Whisk oil, vinegar, honey and mustard, then season. It should taste sharper than you want it to — avocado and feta absorb a lot of it.

  2. Prepare the vegetables

    Halve the tomatoes, slice pepper and cucumber, and cut mango and avocado last so they do not discolour.

  3. Layer, do not toss

    Leaves onto a flat platter, the other vegetables over them, then mango and avocado. Do not toss — avocado breaks down and the salad ends up looking like a purée.

  4. Biltong last

    Scatter over biltong and feta only just before serving. Biltong draws moisture and softens if it sits in dressing.

  5. Dress

    Drizzle over the vinaigrette and serve at once.

Tips

  • The salad works because biltong is salty, mango sweet and feta sour. Leave any of the three out and replace it, or the balance tips.
  • Slice biltong thin and across the grain. In thick pieces it is chewing work rather than a salad ingredient.
  • Peach or nectarine will stand in for the mango. What does not work is no fruit at all.

Biltong in South Africa is what cured sausage is in Germany: everywhere, cheap and requiring no occasion. That it ends up in a salad is therefore not a chef's idea but ordinary life.

What is interesting is what it does there. Biltong brings salt, concentrated meat flavour and a firm, slightly fibrous texture — precisely the three things a leaf salad otherwise lacks. Which is why this one needs no fried ingredient and no warm component.

The only mistake available is timing. Biltong in dressing softens within minutes, and then the bite you chose it for is gone.

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