Drying Time

Before modern technology, people had only a limited number of ways to preserve meat. They could exclude air, usually by frying the meat, then covering it with a layer of melted fat, as in the French goose confit or the Moroccan mutton khli’.

They could pickle it in vinegar like a vegetable, but this was even less common. Still, from Roman times through the Middle Ages, Cyprus exported pickled birds (poulia) around the Mediterranean.

The most common method was drying. Many meats besides beef have been jerked, such as mutton, buffalo, antelope (the South African biltong) and even goat. Salting, a more assertive form of drying, is mostly used on ham and corned beef, but lamb has been salted at times. The flesh of birds, such as chicken, has a high proportion of unsaturated fat, which unfortunately turns rancid faster than saturated fat. That’s one reason you see so little chicken jerky.

Drying changes the taste of meat--we still make jerky and ham even though we have other preservation methods because we like the flavor. The change is particularly noticeable with dried fish, which develops a loud, concentrated fishiness. Salt cod (bacalao), stockfish and their like perfume traditional markets in many countries.

Dried or salted fish is usually soaked in water to soften it before eating. In southern Arabia, though, the usual trail snack, lihim, is a sort of shark meat jerky.