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Cape Braai
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Cooking it outside South Africa

The ingredient you cannot get

13 ingredients give trouble when you cook a South African recipe in a European kitchen. For each one: what it is, where to find it — and which obvious substitute does not work.

Steel bowls of ground masala, paprika and chilli on a patterned cloth, baskets of samosas behind
HelenOnline · CC BY-SA 3.0

Why this page

The answers are scattered across forum posts from 2014. This list gathers them and adds what none of them mention: the substitute that ruins the dish. Everything here comes from the recipes on this site and from the shops linked below, checked on 4 September 2026.

How hard to find

Supermarket
In any larger shop, sometimes under a different name.
Specialist or mail order
Available, but not around the corner. Worth combining an order.
Not available
Not obtainable outside South Africa. Only a substitute will do.

Staples

Mielie meal

Specialist or mail order

Brands at the Cape: White Star · Iwisa No. 1 · Ace

The white maize meal that pap is made from. The bag says super maize meal or special maize meal — they differ in grind, not in content. African grocers outside South Africa carry Iwisa, the same bag that sits on the shelf at the Cape.

Use this instead

Coarse white maize meal from an African grocer. Polenta will do at a push, but it comes out yellower and grainier — a different dish, not a worse one.

This goes wrong

Harina P.A.N. looks identical on the shelf but is pre-cooked Venezuelan arepa flour. It does not make pap, it makes an instant lump.

Samp

Specialist or mail order

Maize with the hull knocked off and then coarsely broken — bigger than meal, smaller than whole kernels. The base of umngqusho.

Use this instead

Coarse maize grits from an African grocer. Finer, much faster, no overnight soak — but you lose the bite that is the whole point of samp.

This goes wrong

Tinned sweetcorn and polenta are not substitutes. Samp needs hours of swelling; anything that cooks faster collapses into porridge.

Self-raising flour

Supermarket

Flour with the raising agent already in it. Standard in South Africa and Britain, unusual in Germany and much of continental Europe.

Use this instead

Mix your own: 40 g of baking powder to 1 kg of plain flour, sifted through properly. That matches the British standard and works in every recipe here.

This goes wrong

Not the same as an instant baking mix — those carry sugar and salt, both of which the recipe already lists separately.

Tinned

Chakalaka

Specialist or mail order

Brands at the Cape: Koo · All Gold

A spiced vegetable relish of onion, carrot, pepper, curry and beans. In South Africa it sits ready-made on the shelf and is used exactly like that.

Use this instead

Cook it — the recipe is on this site and takes half an hour. It is the one case on this list where making it yourself is not just better but easier than hunting for it.

This goes wrong

Ajvar and lecsó look similar but carry no curry and no beans. They taste of peppers, not of chakalaka.

Baked beans in tomato sauce

Supermarket

Brands at the Cape: Koo · Heinz

White beans in a slightly sweet tomato sauce — English baked beans. Koo is the South African standard; in Europe you will find Heinz.

Use this instead

Heinz baked beans from any supermarket. It is the same thing.

This goes wrong

Tinned kidney beans will not do. Chakalaka needs the sweetness and the body of the tomato sauce, or it turns into a bean salad.

Caramel Treat / Top’n’Fill

Supermarket

Brands at the Cape: Nestlé Caramel Treat · Bakers Top’n’Fill

Ready-made caramel in a tin — sweetened condensed milk caramelised at the factory. The base of a peppermint crisp tart.

Use this instead

Shop-bought dulce de leche, or make it: boil an unopened tin of sweetened condensed milk for three hours, then let it cool completely.

This goes wrong

The tin has to stay covered with water the whole time. Let it boil dry and it bursts — which is why people keep warning against this trick.

Seasoning & sauces

Rajah curry powder

Specialist or mail order

Brands at the Cape: Rajah Mild & Spicy · Rajah Hot

South Africa’s default curry powder: mild, heavy on turmeric, light on heat. It stains a strong yellow — that is where the colour of bobotie and geelrys comes from.

Use this instead

Mild curry powder plus an extra half teaspoon of turmeric per tablespoon. Colour is the part you have to add back.

This goes wrong

Madras or an Indian garam masala is too hot and too dark. Cape Malay cooking seasons for aroma, not for heat.

Braaisout / braai salt

Specialist or mail order

Brands at the Cape: Robertsons Braai & Chops · Ina Paarman Braai & Grill

Coarse salt with toasted coriander, paprika and garlic. Every family has its own mix; the constant is the coriander — the same signature as boerewors.

Use this instead

Mix your own, which is the better route anyway: two parts coarse sea salt, one part whole coriander toasted dry and ground, one part paprika, a pinch of garlic granules.

This goes wrong

European steak rubs are usually built on pepper and onion. Without coriander it tastes of a barbecue, not of a braai.

Mrs H.S. Ball’s Chutney

Supermarket

Brands at the Cape: Original · Hot · Peach

The sweet-and-sour fruit chutney in every South African kitchen cupboard. The base of braaibroodjies, monkey gland sauce and half the marinades on this site. Importers ship it across Europe — it is the easiest thing on this list to find.

Use this instead

A mild apricot or mango chutney. At a push, apricot jam with a splash of vinegar and a pinch of curry powder.

This goes wrong

Indian mango chutney with chilli and ginger pulls in another direction. Mrs Ball’s is mild, fruity and only lightly sour — the heat comes from elsewhere.

Golden syrup

Supermarket

Brands at the Cape: Lyle’s Golden Syrup · Illovo

A pale invert sugar syrup with a caramel note. On every shelf in South Africa and Britain; larger continental supermarkets and any British shop carry it.

Use this instead

Light beet syrup or maple syrup. Both are thinner and less caramelly, but in a malva pudding the difference does not show.

This goes wrong

Dark beet syrup and molasses are too assertive — they taste through and turn the batter brown.

Worcestershire sauce

Supermarket

Available everywhere and ever-present in South African cooking — it supplies the salty depth in monkey gland sauce and copper penny salad.

Use this instead

For a vegetarian version use soy sauce, about a third less than stated.

This goes wrong

It contains anchovies. That is in small print on the label and makes any dish containing it non-vegetarian — on a vegetable dish it is the one ingredient to check.

Sweet & baking

Peppermint Crisp

Specialist or mail order

Brands at the Cape: Nestlé

A South African bar from the 1960s: a tube of shattering green mint crystals in milk chocolate. Without it there is no tart named after it.

Use this instead

Dark chocolate with a crisp mint filling, coarsely grated. After Eight works too — softer, so chop it just before layering.

This goes wrong

Mint chocolate with a soft fondant centre melts into the cream and disappears. The bar has to shatter, or you lose exactly the texture the whole thing is about.

Tennis Biscuits

Specialist or mail order

Brands at the Cape: Bakers

Rectangular coconut biscuits from Bakers, firm enough to carry layers and soft enough to yield overnight. The middle of a peppermint crisp tart.

Use this instead

A plain butter biscuit of the same size. You lose the coconut, the structure holds.

This goes wrong

Sponge fingers soak through in minutes and dissolve. This tart needs a biscuit that takes hours to soften.

Karringmelk / buttermilk

Supermarket

Available everywhere but easily bought wrong. Its acidity reacts with the bicarbonate in the dough — that is where the crumbly structure of beskuit comes from.

Use this instead

At a push, milk with a tablespoon of lemon juice per 250 ml, left to stand for ten minutes. Kefir or thin plain yoghurt work too.

This goes wrong

Plain milk will not do. With no acid the bicarbonate stays unspent, the beskuit turns dense instead of short, and it tastes soapy.

Meat & fish

Snoek

Not available

Thyrsites atun, an oily predator from the cold Benguela current off the west coast. Sold butterflied rather than filleted, and full of fine bones.

Use this instead

Mackerel is the nearest relative — oily, assertive, salty. Smoked mackerel for smoorsnoek, a fresh butterflied one for the fire. Bluefish works as well.

This goes wrong

Lean fish like cod or pike-perch dries out over coals within minutes. Snoek works on a fire because it is oily — the substitute has to be too.

Boerewors

Specialist or mail order

Coarsely cut beef with pork belly, coriander and vinegar, in one continuous coil. The composition is set out in South African regulation: at least 90 percent meat, no more than 30 percent fat, no offal beyond the casing.

Use this instead

Ask a butcher for a coarse beef sausage with coriander and vinegar — that description gets you further than the name does. Or make it; the recipe on this site sets it out.

This goes wrong

A fine bratwurst is the opposite: emulsified paste instead of cut meat. And without coriander it is not wors, whatever the label says.

Biltong

Specialist or mail order

Thickly cut beef, cured in vinegar, seasoned with coriander and air-dried. European producers make it by the same method — importing it from South Africa runs into meat import rules.

Use this instead

For the salad: moist biltong from a European maker. Making your own works too and gives the more honest result — it needs only space and moving air.

This goes wrong

Beef jerky is not the same thing. Jerky is thin, sweet-marinated and cooked; biltong is thick, vinegar-cured and dried raw. In a salad jerky goes leathery instead of tender.

Netvet / caul fat

Specialist or mail order

The fatty membrane around the kidneys — a net that melts away almost entirely as it cooks while holding the filling together. Wrapped around liver it becomes skilpadjies.

Use this instead

There is none. Thinly sliced bacon holds the parcels together but does not melt away, and it brings a smokiness that does not belong here.

This goes wrong

It is never in the display case, not even in South Africa. Order it from the butcher — it is a by-product and costs almost nothing, but it has to be set aside for you.

Fresh

Waterblommetjies

Not available

The flower spikes of Aponogeton distachyos, a water plant from the dams of the Cape winter-rainfall areas. A short season in winter and early spring. The taste sits between green beans and artichoke hearts, with a citrus note.

Use this instead

Green beans with a few bottled artichoke hearts and a squeeze of lemon. Not the same, but the same direction — and it still makes a bredie.

This goes wrong

Not sold outside South Africa, not even tinned. Where the plant has naturalised — Australia, New Zealand — it appears on watch lists and should not be foraged.

Fynbos honey

Not available

Honey from the Cape vegetation: medium to dark, assertive, with resinous and herbal notes. It stands up to the salt of halloumi where a mild honey vanishes.

Use this instead

A strong forest or fir honey. Both are dark and resinous enough to do the same job.

This goes wrong

Blossom or acacia honey is too mild. On the cheese it reads as nothing but sweetness — which was not the point.

The shops

5 addresses that stock more than one of these. No paid placements — they are here because they actually have the things.

Meat cannot be imported privately from South Africa. The biltong and wors you can buy are made in the EU by the same method.

To the recipes And at the meat counter?