Most people meet biltong straight from the pack, and that's a fine place to start. But a cured, air-dried meat with its fat left on earns a place in more of the week than that. Here are four ways we eat it.
1. On a board
Slice a stick thinly across the grain, fat on, and put it out with a hard cheese, pickled onions and good bread. The salt and spice of the cure sit well beside something sharp, and the fat carries the flavour the way marbling does in a good steak. Sliced Original Biltong is the place to start.
2. At the pub
Stokkies are our biltong cut into thin strips before it dries, so they come out firmer and chewier than slices and keep their shape in a jacket pocket. Open a pack on the table and it goes round.
3. On the go
Biltong is light and travels well: a desk drawer, a rucksack on a walk, the car on a long drive. Droëwors is the easiest to carry, thin dried beef sausage that snaps clean. Check the pack for how to keep it once it's open.
4. In the kitchen
Slice it thin and use it the way you'd use a cured ham. Scatter it over a salad of peppery leaves, stir it through pasta at the end with butter and black pepper, or put it on top of scrambled eggs. Add it last, off the heat, so it stays tender.
What do you eat biltong with?
Sharp cheese, pickled onions and good bread on a board; a pint at the pub; or on its own, straight from the pack. In cooking, treat it like a cured ham: salads, pasta and eggs, added at the end.
Choose yours. Proof's in the pack.