Instructions

1. Cut the beef along the grain into strips about 2.5 cm thick, keeping them even. One strip half again as thick as its neighbours will still be wet when you take the rest down.
2. Work the coarse salt in and let the strips sit in a dish for an hour. Salt pulls the first of the water out and starts the cure, and this recipe carries enough of it to matter.
3. Warm the maple syrup and brown sugar into the bourbon and cider vinegar until the sugar has fully dissolved, then let it cool before it touches the meat. Cold syrup will not disperse and ends up as sticky patches on a few strips.
4. Pour it over the salted strips, add the smoked paprika and cracked pepper, and refrigerate overnight in a covered dish. Most of the alcohol goes off during the hang, but the sugar and the smoke it carries stay.
5. Drain the strips well and blot them before hanging. Sugar-heavy marinade left dripping will never dry — it stays tacky for the whole drying time and attracts every insect in the house.
6. Hang them on separate hooks with a good gap between. These strips stay stickier than a plain vinegar biltong, and any two that touch will bond and have to be torn apart.
7. Leave the rack at 25 °C for 72 hours, which gives a wet, fatty biltong. For a drier biltong add another 24 hours at a time until it suits you. The low setting is not a shortcut you can skip past with more heat: the sugars on the surface will caramelise and seal the strip if you push it.
8. Done means firm under a pinch with no yielding centre, and a cut face that is dark and even rather than bright in the middle. Expect this one to feel slightly tacky on the outside even when it is finished — that is the maple, not moisture.
9. Slice it across the grain and store it in a breathable bag in a cool cupboard for a month. Because of the sugar it is worth checking this one more often than a plain biltong, and any white fuzz rather than a dry salt bloom means the batch goes out.