Biltong is air-dried, vinegar-cured beef that retains 20–30% residual moisture, making it noticeably chewier and denser than jerky. Jerky gets its texture from heat, dried in a smoker or oven over 4–8 hours down to 10–15% moisture. The real difference between them is not just texture or flavor, it's the entire preservation method, the cut of meat, and a few centuries of separate food history.
Start with how each one is made. Biltong gets marinated in vinegar, salt, and spices, then hung to air-dry at ambient temperature for 5 to 14 days depending on strip thickness and climate. No heat touches it. The acetic acid from the vinegar does the heavy lifting as a preservative, working alongside salt to make the meat safe and shelf-stable. Jerky skips the vinegar bath and relies on salt plus smoke compounds from heat-drying to preserve the meat. That's why the two taste so different even when the seasoning looks similar on paper.
The cut of meat matters too. Biltong is made from whole muscle cuts like topside or silverside, sliced with the grain, which is part of why it pulls apart the way it does. Jerky is often made from thin slices cut against the grain, or from ground meat reformed into sheets. You're not eating the same product in different packaging, you're eating two fundamentally different things.
People also compare biltong to salami, but that's a different category entirely. Salami is fermented. Lactic acid bacteria lower the pH during curing, which is what gives it that tangy, complex flavor and a completely different texture. Biltong uses no fermentation at all. The vinegar and salt do the work without any bacterial cultures involved.
Then there's pemmican, which sometimes comes up in survival food or ancestral diet conversations. Pemmican is intentionally high-fat, made by mixing dried lean meat with rendered fat for maximum energy density and shelf life in extreme conditions. Biltong uses lean cuts with visible fat trimmed away, so the two serve very different purposes even if they're both dried meat products.
One last thing worth knowing: biltong originated in South Africa, developed by Dutch settlers in the 17th century as a way to preserve meat without refrigeration. North American jerky has its own separate history, evolving from Indigenous preservation traditions. They're parallel solutions to the same problem, not versions of each other.
If you're deciding which to buy, the texture question usually settles it. If you want something you chew slowly with a little give, biltong is your answer. If you want something thinner and drier with a smokier flavor profile, jerky fits better. You can see how biltong is made and what cuts we use on our biltong craft and sourcing page, or browse the range starting with our sliced biltong to get a feel for the texture before committing to a larger order.
