popular. Modern examples include American
jerky, Latin American carne seca, Norwegian
fenalår and southern African biltong, whose
textures can range from chewy to brittle. Two
refined versions are Italian bresaola and
Swiss Buendnerfleisch, which are beef salted
and sometimes flavored with wine and herbs
before a slow, cool drying period of up to
several months. They’re served in paper-thin
slices.
Freeze-Drying Freeze-drying is the technique
originally used by Andean peoples to make
charqui; they took advantage of the thin dry
air to evaporate moisture from meat during
sunny days and sublimate it from ice crystals
during freezing nights. The result was an
uncooked, honeycombed tissue that would
readily reabsorb water during later cooking. In
the industrial version, the meat is rapidly
frozen under vacuum, then mildly heated to
sublimate its water. Because this kind of