Backside Strip

South Africans--white South Africans, anyway--seem to have a thing for dried meat.

The stuff they eat here might be a distant cousin of beef jerky, but for two important differences: it's made from a quality of meat that you might actually want to consume, and the animal involved isn't always a cow.

They call it biltong. They sell it everywhere, including the nationwide chain of gourmet grocery stores called Woolworths, where it can often be found in all its varieties hanging on a rack by the cash register.

On the back of every package are these words:

Did You Know?
The word 'biltong' is derived from Dutch, with 'bil' meaning 'backside' and 'tong' meaning 'strip.'

Yum.

This is what the package looks like:



And this is an exclusive view of some biltong, right before I ate it:



That particular kind was marketed as “moist sliced beef biltong,” which Katie believes “sounds dirty.” That was before she read the product description in smaller letters on the front. It says the biltong inside is “tender and moist with a natural fat layer to enhance the flavour.”

Double yum.

Though all biltong is dried meat, all dried meat is not biltong. There's a type of sausage here called droëwors that is available in dried pieces, like this:



As I said, it's not all made with beef. That particular scintillating piece of animal came from this package:


Triple yum.