The Cure · Starter
Biltong
- Intermediate
- 30 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with acid holding everything up to the light, a sweet edge rounding the corners, closing toasted and warm.
Ingredients
- 1 kg beef silverside, cut with the grain into strips 25 mm thick
- 60 ml brown malt or cider vinegar
- 25 g coarse sea salt (2.5%)
- 20 g coriander seed, toasted and coarsely cracked
- 10 g dark brown sugar
- 8 g black pepper, cracked
The skills inside
Brining & curingResting meat & slicing against the grain
Allergen screen
Found: gluten
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Dip each strip in the vinegar, let it drain, then toss it in the salt, coriander, sugar and pepper.
- Stack in a non-reactive dish and refrigerate 6 hours, turning once, until the surface has gone dull and firm. 360 min
- Wipe each strip with a vinegar-dampened cloth, hook it, and hang in a warm box at 25-30C (77-86F) with a fan pulling air past every face, nothing touching.
- Weigh the batch daily. Medium biltong, still red in the middle, is 50% weight loss and takes 3 to 4 days. Dry sticks are 60%.
- Slice across the grain and store in paper, not plastic, or it sweats and softens.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Resting meat & slicing against the grain 56 recipes
- It came off the heat BEFORE the target temperature, measured with a probe rather than by time, because carryover keeps driving the inside up after it is out.
- The probe went into the coldest likely part rather than the easiest one to reach: the reading that matters is the lowest one, not the first one.
- Rested for a time matched to its size, somewhere warm, and not cut into partway through to see how it is doing.
- The board is nearly dry when it is finally cut. A spreading pool means it was cut too early, and that liquid should have stayed inside.
- The grain was found and the knife went ACROSS it, so the fibres are cut short, and the blade was sharp enough that the slices hold together rather than tearing.
Where it goes wrong It was cut straight off the heat, usually because everything else was ready. The muscle is still contracted and the juice still driven to the centre, so it runs out onto the board; the meat is drier than it ever needed to be, and the flavour that left it is sitting in a puddle under the knife.
Brining & curing 88 recipes
- Fully committed either way: in a wet brine nothing floats clear of the liquid, and in a dry cure every face carries salt, seams and cavities included.
- The time was measured against the weight and the thickness rather than the recipe’s convenience, and it stayed cold for all of it.
- The change is visible and can be felt: the flesh is firmer than raw and its colour has deepened or gone more translucent, rather than still being slack and pale.
- Rinsed and dried as the recipe asks, and anything meant to crisp afterwards has a surface dry and tacky to the touch before it goes near heat.
- Cooked and tasted, it is seasoned right through to the centre rather than merely salty at the surface, and not so salty that the dish cannot be eaten.
Where it goes wrong It sat in the brine well past its time because a few extra hours seemed harmless; the surface is over-salted and the texture has gone from firm to spongy and wet, and no cooking takes salt back out.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Cabernet Sauvignon or Malbec
- Also Right
- Tempranillo (Rioja Reserva)
- From the Taps
- Amber ale
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water, make room
Tannin binds to seared protein and fat: each bite softens the wine, each sip resets the palate: the steakhouse equation.
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