A different kind of cure

Biltong is not jerky, but I had to try it.

Anyone who knows me knows I love making my own beef jerky. I love jerky, and homemade jerky is much, much better than the storebought product.

For years, I have wanted to try biltong. Biltong fanatics will tell you that biltong is absolutely not jerky. Biltong, which hails from South Africa, is a dried, preserved meat intended for snacking, but it’s different from jerky in several key ways.

When you make whole muscle jerky, you slice meat thinly, into serving-size pieces, and then cure it using a marinade (or sometimes a dry rub which acts like a marinade). Jerky marinades generally contain salt, sugar/honey/molasses or some other kind of sweetner, and acid. My favorite basic jerky marinade, which I can customize in a million different ways, is Alton Brown’s recipe, which is based on equal parts soy sauce and worcestershire sauce, sweetened with a little honey. The salt (from the soy sauce), honey, and acid (from the vinegar in the worcestershire sauce), when the meat is dried, form a very thick syrup in which it would be hard for bacteria to thrive.

Most people who make jerky use a dehydrator, and dehydrators are set to dry jerky using heat as well as air circulation. USDA calls for jerky to be heated to 165 degrees, either before it’s dried or while it…