Cut and Cured Co. Puts Biltong on America’s Plate

Meat’s back on the menu for South Africans in the United States, as Nicole Ackerman and Tremayne Johnson’s biltong company, Cut and Cured Co., brings the iconic South African snack to the States. South Africans are very familiar with biltong, but not every American may be. An air-cured beef snack, biltong has no heat or smoke added to the curing process. Although some might think beef jerky is a comparable snack, the two don’t have too much in common other than being made of meat.

“It’s cured in a different way to jerky, and I would say that the process we use in biltong is actually far better because it preserves nutrients,” Ackerman said. “When you use heat, the nutrients evaporate.” 

A common misconception is that the curing process isn’t as safe as smoking or heating, but the air-curing process is more than enough to make meat edible. Johnson and Ackerman take the process from their ancestors, as their forefathers would use the process to preserve meat while crossing the Kalahari Desert. Not only does biltong’s process improve the consumer’s nutrient intake, but the curing process is healthier, too. 

“When jerky is made, one of the main ingredients for curing is sugar, and we don’t use any added sugar in our recipe,” Johnson said. “For one kilogram of meat, we use four tablespoons of Worcestershire, and that recipe has sugar in it, but when it comes down to one bag or seven ounces of biltong, you’ve got about 0.00002 grams of sugar.”

The pair’s Pompano Beach, Florida, based biltong company wasn’t always their plan, especially when they joined the yachting industry years ago. After growing up in Knysna, South Africa, with a successful rugby career that almost took him to Charlotte, North Carolina, Johnson eventually accepted an invitation from his brother to join the yachting industry after injuries derailed his career. Already familiar with yachting due to his brother’s ties to the industry, Johnson became an engineer, working on several yachts. Ackerman’s push into the yachting industry was like Johnson’s. Growing up in Johannesburg, South Africa, she had friends around her who turned to yachting, but she never considered  it herself — until life became a bit too tedious. 

“I was at home, working as a graphic designer, and I was really bored of just sitting at the office,” Ackerman said. “I did a season in the Med, I spent time being a deckhand, a stew, a little bit of cooking, went back home and said, ‘[Working at home] is definitely not for me, I’m not coming back.”

Once Ackerman fully dived into yachting, she slowly worked her way up from deck and stew positions to working as a head chef. Although both natives of South Africa, the pair didn’t meet each other until visiting Florida in 2015. 

“I came over to do courses, upgrade my license, and a mutual friend told me Nicole Ackerman is going to be at the bar,” Johnson said. “She walked past me at the bar, I said hello to her, and we’ve been together since then.”

Johnson and Ackerman didn’t just have synergy towards each other, but also had a shared love for biltong, a food that has helped fuel their adventures across the seas. 

“I think I’ve just got a passion for it, working with it for so long and just loving it,” Johnson said about why they chose to make biltong.

“It’s also just so nostalgic and the most South African snack you could possibly get,” Ackerman added. “It’s such a staple of South Africa.” 

Although Ackerman’s experience in the galley would have some believe she handles most of the biltong, Johnson has spent the last seven years developing his recipe and making biltong while on board and ashore. Both Ackerman and Johnson had experience making biltong, especially for fellow crewmembers on board — often using the engineer room’s dry atmosphere to cure the meat.

“Being on yachts and always in the galley, on crossings you always make biltong for the crew because that’s what they want,” Ackerman said. 

The pair’s love of biltong, combined with their passion for bringing healthier, more sustainable food to the world, led them to create Cut and Cured Co. A push from the couple’s friends helped along the way, too, as anyone who tried the pair’s biltong urged them to start selling it. The two hope to make Americans fall in love with biltong like they did growing up in South Africa — while separating themselves from the competition in the process.

“A lot of companies we know use grass-fed beef, but they don’t necessarily have grass-finished beef,” Ackerman said. “The difference there is that if beef is grass finished, it’s fed grass its entire life up until it’s been harvested. If it’s just grass-fed, it’s just fed grass for some portion of its life and normally corn fed or corn finished to fatten it up.”

Cut and Cured Co. now offers four different selections of organic, all-natural, grass-fed, and grass-finished biltong — perfect for keto or paleo diets while being gluten-free and high in protein. Their traditional biltong comes in fatty and lean varieties, with beef sticks and chili bites rounding out their biltong products. Apart from biltong, Ackerman and Johnson also sell grass-fed, grass-finished, organic beef tallow. All the couple’s products are made without GMOs, antibiotics, and growth hormones.

As Cut and Cured Co. prepares to enter stores around the country, their products can be ordered online at cutandcuredco.com. Delivery throughout the United States and directly to yachts is available, while international deliveries are coming soon. As for other plans in Cut and Cured Co.’s future, Johnson plans to experiment with making biltong with different cuts like bison, elk, and maybe even a Floridian classic — alligator.

“That’s South Florida for you, no?” Johnson said with a laugh. “I’m sure there’ll be people that like that.” 

instagram.com/cutandcuredco

tiktok.com/@cutandcuredco

Topics: