Dried whole muscle
Biltong
Biltong is a dried whole muscle product made from beef. This page collects the facts this site can source: its cure type, where its protected names are registered, and the curing and safety parameters a named authority actually publishes. It does not print an ageing time no source publishes.
At a glance
- Cure type
- Dried
- Meat
- Beef
- Origin
- No single origin asserted
- Protected designations
- none in the EU register under this name
- US standard of identity
- none
- Named by FSIS
- yes
Cure type and meat from the class definition; protected status from 2026-09-04 eAmbrosia, the EU geographical indications register. Full detail on the register and standards page.
How it is cured
Biltong belongs to the dried whole muscle family. The steps in that process, and the parameters published sources attach to each of them, are set out under air drying. This site describes the process and its parameters; it does not publish a procedure to follow.
Curing salts
In US regulation the permitted curing agents are sodium or potassium nitrite, which fixes colour and controls Clostridium botulinum, and sodium or potassium nitrate, permitted only as a source of nitrite and not allowed in bacon (9 CFR 424.21(c)). Because products of this family are held for weeks or months, nitrate matters here: nitrate-reducing bacteria convert it to nitrite slowly over the cure, giving a reservoir a single dose of nitrite cannot. The premixed salts sold as "cure #1" (nitrite only) and "cure #2" (nitrite plus nitrate) are trade names for these agents, not regulatory categories. This site does not publish dosing; the ingoing limits are on the ingredient and safety pages.
The permitted agents and their ingoing limits are on the nitrite and nitrate chart entries, and the safety role of each is on the safety page.
Published time and temperature
The only time-and-temperature figures carried here are process-control parameters a named authority publishes for this kind of product. They are not an ageing style for any one maker.
Parameters
- Shelf-stability water activity (Staphylococcus aureus)
- 0.85 or below stored in air; 0.91 or below vacuum packed. detail
FSIS Compliance Guideline for Meat and Poultry Jerky, FSIS-GD-2014-0010, applied to other shelf-stable products by FSIS-GD-2023-0002
Ageing
No source this site cites publishes a typical ageing time or chamber temperature for this class. For a protected name the minimum ageing is fixed in the filed product specification, which the EU register does not expose through its API; it is reached through the register entry linked on each protected-name page. The time-and-temperature figures above, where present, are process-control parameters an authority does publish, not a house ageing style.
Protected designations
No name matching Biltong sits in the EU register under the two meat classes. In the United States most cured-meat words carry no compositional guarantee unless a section of 9 CFR part 319 defines them, which is why the standard of identity, where there is one, is the fact worth checking.
What this page does not tell you
This site publishes parameters and their sources. It does not tell anyone that a preparation is safe, because "safe" is a conclusion about a specific product rather than a property of a class. Curing controls real hazards with curing salts and with controlled temperature and humidity; the hazards, and the parameter that controls each one, are on the safety page. Nothing here is a recipe.
The full record for this class - the EU register entries, any US standard of identity, and the FoodData Central composition rows - is on the Biltong register and standards page.
Protected status: eAmbrosia, the EU geographical indications register, retrieved 2026-09-04. Curing agents: 9 CFR 424.21(c), table of permitted curing agents (eCFR). Process parameters: FSIS compliance guidelines, cited above. Spine generated by scripts/build-products.mjs on 2026-09-09.