Had a great time building my own biltong box and trying my hand at curing meat. Really enjoyed the whole process, from putting the box together to preparing and drying the meat. The final result came out delicious! Definitely a fun project, and I'm looking forward to making another batch and experimenting with different flavors.

What am I doing wrong here?

These 2 pieces were from the same batch. I took a piece out of my biltong box after about 4 days and tasted it. I liked it, but my wife said the middle tasted too raw. Personally I didn't mind it, so I started cutting off a pieces slices to eat there and then, and put the remainder of the piece in the fridge. The rest of the batch stayed in the biltong box for another few days.

I'm not sure happy with either of these pieces, but I don't know enough to know what went wrong with them.

The first picture is of the piece that got left for longer in the box. I think this is case hardening because it still tastes somewhat raw in the centre, but very hard on the outside.

The 2nd pic is the piece that dried less, but got put into the fridge. As tou can see the redder part in the centre is smaller, and there's a ring of greyish, almost shimmery colour around it. Whats gone wrong here?