Kitoza

A salted meat from Madagascar

Kitoza is a Malagasy meat product: strips of beef, often zebu, or pork, salted and seasoned and then dried, smoked or both. It is a preserved meat, not a fermented one.

It is eaten with rice, often as a thin rice soup, and sometimes with greens. One journalistic report describes northern Madagascar eating it with a thin rice porridge, and says preferences differ in the central highlands.

Reported forms and production

Published studies describe long strips of beef, often zebu, or pork, seasoned with salt and sometimes garlic, pepper or ginger. These descriptions document reported ingredients and product forms; they do not specify household quantities.

Accounts describe sun-dried, smoked and combined forms. Traditional smoke is reported over a kitchen fire or in a smoking unit. Studies find more moisture in smoked samples than in dried samples, so these are distinct product forms.

The cited sources do not establish a validated household time, temperature, salt concentration or storage limit. These descriptions are not directions for home preservation.

Research and safety context

Studies report polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in smoked kitoza, with some samples above the EU benzo(a)pyrene limit cited by the study. A separate study reports that a staged industrial approach reduced PAH levels, but its findings are not a household process.

Home-made samples were made from fresh raw meat and microbiological quality was not generally controlled; researchers found substantial variability between batches. This page records those findings and reported traditions without supplying a home preservation method.