On the heat. Medium

Ingredients

• — STORING
• Paper bag or cloth, never plastic. Sealed plastic sweats and grows mould within days.
• Cool, dark, dry, with air moving. Not the fridge, which makes it damp and dull.
• Wet biltong: 5 days. Dry biltong: 3 weeks. Droëwors: 4 weeks.
• For longer, slice it first, then freeze in portions — it thaws in minutes.
• — CUTTING
• Always across the grain, at a slight angle, as thin as your knife allows.
• A sharp knife and a board beats a biltong slicer for lamb, which is finer-grained than beef.

Method

1. On a board: sliced biltong, whole droëwors, a hard aged cheese, green figs or apricot preserve, and salted almonds. Nothing acidic — vinegar on vinegar.
2. Through a salad: shaved biltong over rocket, pear and blue cheese. Add it at the table so it stays dry.
3. In pap or samp: stir a handful of finely shaved biltong through at the end. It rehydrates and seasons the whole pot.
4. Droëwors wants nothing done to it at all. It is snapped, not sliced, and eaten with cold beer.
5. With mustard: the one condiment that genuinely improves lamb biltong. Serve it on the side, never on it.

Cook's note. Lamb biltong is not beef biltong. It is finer, more delicate and more perishable, and it goes over the line from dry to brittle much faster. Buy it in smaller quantities, more often.

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