How Is Biltong Made? From Cut to Air-Dried Snack

Biltong looks simple. A dark, dense strip of beef you tear into on the trail, at your desk, or somewhere between two mountain passes. But behind that humble bite is a method South Africans have been refining for the better part of two centuries — and it's a world away from how American-style jerky gets made. So how is biltong actually made? Let's walk through it, step by step.

It starts with the cut

Good biltong begins long before any spice touches the meat. The traditional pick is a lean, whole-muscle cut — silverside or topside from the hindquarter — sliced with the grain into thick strips or generous slabs. Thickness is the point: biltong is cut chunkier than jerky, which is exactly why it stays so satisfyingly meaty in the middle. Excess fat gets trimmed (it doesn't dry well and turns rancid faster), and the strips are kept hearty so they hold their texture through the days of drying ahead.

The cure: vinegar, salt and a coriander backbone

Here's where biltong shows its personality. The strips get a wash or short soak in vinegar — usually brown or cider vinegar — which seasons the meat, helps preserve it, and lays down that gentle tang every biltong fan recognises. Then comes the rub: coarse salt, plenty of cracked black pepper and, crucially, toasted coriander seed. Coriander is the signature note of classic biltong — leave it out and you've made something else entirely. Some recipes add a touch of brown sugar or a few extra spices, but salt, pepper, coriander and vinegar are the backbone. The seasoned meat then rests for several hours so the cure can work its way in.

Air-dried, not cooked

This is the big one — the step that truly separates biltong from jerky. American-style jerky is dried with heat, cooked low and slow in a dehydrator or oven over a matter of hours. Biltong isn't cooked at all. It's hung in cool, moving air and left to dry naturally for days — sometimes a week or more, depending on how "wet" or dry you like it. No heat, just patience and good airflow. That slow, cool drying is why biltong keeps a deeper, beefier flavour and a firmer-but-tender chew, while heat-dried jerky comes out drier and snappier. Same basic idea — preserved meat — but a completely different result on the tongue.

How do you know it's ready?

Biltong is judged by feel. Give a strip a press: a soft give means a moister, redder centre; firm all the way through means a drier, more intense bite. Some folks swear by "wet" biltong that's still tender in the middle, others want it snap-dry from edge to edge. There's no wrong answer here — just your answer.

Meet the sausage cousin: droëwors

One more for the family album: droëwors. It's biltong's sausage sibling — spiced beef (often with that same coriander hit) pushed into a thin casing and air-dried the same patient way. If biltong is the steak of the snack world, droëwors is the boerewors that decided to stick around in your bag for the whole week.

Skip the four-day wait

Want to taste the process without turning your kitchen into a drying room? We've got the real thing ready to go. Browse the full biltong collection — from the classic, vinegar-marinated Indiana Biltong Original to wild-game options like ostrich and springbok, plus a few sticks of droëwors for good measure. All the craft, none of the waiting.