Nutrition
| Per 100 g | Per 1 oz (28 g) | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 403 kcal | 114 kcal |
| Protein | 60.7 g | 17.2 g |
| Fat | 15.3 g | 4.3 g |
| saturated | 5.6 g | 1.6 g |
| Carbohydrate | 1.5 g | 0.4 g |
| sugars | 0.9 g | 0.3 g |
| Fibre | 0.6 g | 0.2 g |
| Sodium | 823 mg | 233 mg |
Estimated from the ingredients, for the finished dried product. Actual values vary with the produce you use and how far you dry it.
Ingredients
- 5 kg beef
- 2 tablespoons (30 ml) coarse salt
- 1 tablespoon ground coffee (espresso fine)
- 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 tablespoon brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)
- 150 ml balsamic vinegar
- 1 tablespoon cracked black pepper
Instructions
- Cut the beef with the grain into strips about 2.5 cm thick. Biltong is torn along its fibres rather than chewed across them, and a strip cut the wrong way falls into crumbs.
- Salt the strips on their own first and leave them an hour. This batch carries less salt than most biltong recipes, so the time it spends in direct contact with the meat matters more than usual.
- Wipe the drawn-out liquid off, then pour over the balsamic and turn the strips in it. The vinegar is a surface acid that discourages anything from growing in the days the meat spends hanging, and it wants to touch every face.
- Mix the ground coffee, cocoa, brown sugar, cayenne and cracked pepper and press them onto the wet strips by hand. Neither the coffee nor the cocoa will dissolve in a marinade — they are dry powders and they sit on the surface as a crust, which is the whole effect you are after.
- Leave the coated strips in a covered glass dish in the fridge overnight, turning them once. Glass rather than metal, because balsamic will pit an aluminium tray and taste of it afterwards.
- Hang each strip from its own hook with a clear gap to the next. Coffee grounds and cocoa rub off wherever two strips touch, and you get a bald patch that dries faster than the rest.
- Hold the machine at 25 °C for 72 hours, which is low and slow by design and leaves the biltong wet and fatty. For a drier biltong add another 24 hours at a time until it suits you. Biltong is air-dried rather than cooked, and pushing the heat up sets a hard shell that traps a raw centre behind it.
- Test by squeezing a thick strip between finger and thumb: firm all the way through means done, and any softness in the middle means it hangs longer. Cut one open if you are unsure — a dark even colour through the cut face is what you want, and a red wet core means it is not ready.
- Slice the cured strips across the grain and keep them in a paper bag or a cloth bag, not an airtight one. Biltong is still slightly moist inside and it needs to breathe; sealed up it sweats and moulds within the week, while a breathing bag in a cool cupboard holds a month.
