When I travel, I love to immerse into local culture and cuisine. This article will allow tease you on how to do both while also supplying a vital snack during your bush drives.
For most, the first question is “what is biltong?”. The short quick answer would be “a kind of dried and cured meat, often beef”. Giving that answer will make you think “oh, beef jerky!”. This answer will get you a strong and quick rebuff from Patsy, my South African friend that introduced me to this treat. To avoid this faux pas, let me give you a little more description. Biltong is typically more moist than jerky. It differs from Jerky in taste, ingredients and production process … and often in the types of meat.
Typical ingredients include cider vinegar, plus equal amounts of rock salt, coriander, black pepper and brown sugar. The meat is soaked/marinated in vinegar for a few hours, and finally poured off before the meat is seasoned. The vinegar step is a distinctive difference to jerky. This mix is then ground roughly together, sprinkled liberally over the meat and rubbed into the meat. Some variants include chili peppers, garlic and Worcestershire sauce. Once the meat is seasoned, it is left to dry overnight or up to 4 days. The meat may be beef, but could also be venison of animals such as Kudu or Impala or even ostrich.
Biltong hanging in the store, awaiting your selection from the butcher. (photo courtesy of BestBiltong.com)
Enough about making biltong, let’s get to the buying and eating step. I buy my biltong in Jo’berg prior to going into Botswana. Specifically, I have always bought mine at a Spar Supermarket. The strips of biltong are hanging in a controlled atmosphere display case as long one inch wide strips (see attached image). I have the butcher show me with thumb pressure how moist the different pieces are. Since I am going to have this stuff in my vehicle in a very dry Chobe locale, I want moist me to start. Once I have selected my preferred cut, I have the meet “thick cut” (to about 3/8”). This is another way biltong varies from jerky as jerky is typically thin cut. I find that 500 grams is more than enough for 2 people for 10 days, including the long 14 hour drive up to Kasane/Chobe. The butch places the chopped biltong in a brown wax paper bag … and I place the bag on the floorboard of the truck in easy reach for when I am on a game drive or on the road in general. Biltong is an excellent chewing snack.
If you don’t get the chance to go to a proper butcher, you can also buy biltong in vacuum sealed or other packaged bags at the Spar or other grocery store in Kasane. If purchased this way, it will be listed as Biltong Stokkies. I think Stokkies is Afrikaans for “little sticks”. For easy recognition, I have attached a photo of what the typical packages look like. The prepacked biltong can be bought spicy or regular and with varies types of game as the meat. A popular brand is “Takis”, which comes in a bright yellow and blue bag.
Packaged Biltong, typically found near the check-out counters in grocery stores in Kasane
Now a little on the culture/history of biltong: Biltong originated in South Africa. The word biltong is from the Dutch bil (“rump”) and tong (“strip” or “tongue”). The local refer to biltong as “wet” (moist), “medium” or “dry”. The dry can really work your teeth, so I suggest wet or medium. Additionally, some customers prefer slices with a lot of marbled fat among the muscle fibers, while others prefer the lean. The lean seems a little tougher for my teeth.
So that’s my story. Buy some, you will not regret it!
Hi there. I came across your site by accident and noticed you have a great picture of hanging biltong that I took which we use on our site. I don’t mind you using it at all, but could you please link the picture to our site http://www.bestbiltong.com? We make biltong here in the UK and use imported Botswana beef (BMC)to make it.
Andrew, no problem. Please fill free to add more insight into biltong production if we missed any of the keys that make this such a great snack while on safari.