Beef jerky as we know it in the United States is really just one branch of a much older family tree. Nearly every dried meat tradition on this list solves the same basic problem in its own way. Peru remains one of the largest producers of traditional charqui today, still relying on cold air drying methods passed down for generations. Biltong: South Africa’s Air Dried CousinBiltong looks a lot like jerky at a glance, but the two are made quite differently. Jerky comes from ch’arki, a Quechua word used by Andean cultures for salted, dried meat, later anglicized by Spanish speakers into jerky.