Side · Biltongslaai
Biltong salad
Rocket, avocado, feta and mango with thinly sliced biltong and a honey-mustard vinaigrette. Ten minutes of work, and the biltong comes ready-sliced out of the packet.
← All lines
Line of origin · late 20th century to today
Made at the Cape
This line gathers the dishes that have no route of origin because they were invented in South Africa itself — out of what the supermarket shelf offered and what works on a grid.
Signature: dot-dash
Not every dish has a migration story. Some were simply invented here, and demonstrably late.
Brought to the fire
The hinged grid as a baking tin, the packet product as an ingredient, the vegetarian main course at a meat fire.
What came with it
- Braai pie: puff pastry in a hinged grid, not twenty years old
- Salads out of tins and packets — onion soup powder as a seasoning
- Halloumi, mushrooms and butternut as dishes in their own right
- Pudding out of the last coals rather than out of an oven
Why this line exists: it would be an invented provenance to hand a braai pie to the trekboers or halloumi to Cape Malay cooking. Both are demonstrably recent. Rather than push them into a line where they do not belong, they stand here as what they are.
Two things produced these dishes. One is the hinged grid, which lets you braai things that are not meat and would fall through an open grid. The other is the supermarket shelf: onion soup powder, tinned beans, ready-made chakalaka, caramel in a tin. That is not a fallback — it is the ingredient list people actually use.
On top of that came a shift in occasion. Since 2005 there has been a campaign to keep Heritage Day on 24 September also as National Braai Day — braai as something written and talked about in public. Most of these recipes date from that period.
The recipes on this line
Side · Chakalaka-pastaslaai
Chakalaka pasta salad
Fusilli with chakalaka, baked beans and a spoon of mayonnaise. Four ingredients, ten minutes' work — and the hottest salad on the table.
Meat
Gatsby
A whole baguette packed with vinegar-soaked chips, meat and hot sauce, cut into six. Not a sandwich for one — a meal for half the street.
Side · Aartappelbak
Potato bake
Thinly sliced potatoes layered with onion, cream and brown onion soup powder, an hour and a half in the oven. The side that is finished at any braai before the fire is even lit.
Side · Kerrie-noedelslaai
Three-colour curry pasta salad
Tricolour fusilli in a sweet-sour curry dressing, left overnight. In South Africa it is kerrie-noedelslaai, and no bring-and-braai is without it.
Fish · Calamari op die kole
Calamari off the grid
Squid tubes and tentacles, an hour in garlic, chilli and lemon, then three minutes a side over full coals. Longer would be the mistake.
Meat · T-bone tjop
T-bone with braai salt
A thick T-bone over full coals, seasoned with home-mixed braai salt of toasted coriander, salt and paprika. Two seconds on the hand test — this is searing, not cooking.
Side · Halloumi op die kole
Braai halloumi with fynbos honey
Thick slices of halloumi over hot coals, then dressed with honey, lemon and chilli. Eight minutes from packet to plate — the fastest thing at the fire.
Meat · Rashers
Pork belly rashers
Thinly cut pork belly in a curry and honey marinade, crisp in twenty minutes over medium coals. The side that lies next to the wors on every South African grid.
Side · Gevulde sampioene
Stuffed braai mushrooms
Large brown mushrooms filled with feta, garlic and thyme, in foil over medium coals. The one vegetarian item that does not look like an apology next to a steak.
Snack
Braaipastei
Medium
Snack · Braaipastei
Braai pie
Puff pastry filled with wors, cheese and chakalaka, baked golden in a hinged grid over medium coals. Proof that pastry belongs at a fire.
Side · Botterskorsie in die kole
Butternut out of the coals
Halved butternut with onion, garlic and rosemary in the cavity, 45 minutes in foil beside the coals. Chakalaka goes in at the end, and it becomes a main course.
Sweet · Braaibanane
Braai bananas
Bananas in their skins, split lengthways and filled with chocolate, twelve minutes in the last of the coals. They cook in the last of the coals while the table is being cleared.
Sweet
Peppermint Crisp-tert
Right at the end
Sweet · Peppermint Crisp-tert
Peppermint Crisp tart
Caramel, cream and crushed mint chocolate between coconut biscuits, left in the fridge overnight. No oven, no fire, twenty minutes of work — and the pudding every South African child recognises.