Side
Chakalaka
A hot vegetable relish with curry, carrot, peppers and baked beans in tomato sauce. Eaten warm, at room temperature or cold, and served next to the pap rather than on the grid.
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Line of origin · from the 1970s
Portuguese-Mozambican
The Portuguese-Mozambican line arrived with migration from Angola and Mozambique after 1974 and brought peri-peri — the small bird’s eye chilli and the sauce made from it.
Signature: fine dashes
The youngest line, and the one with the biggest hold on what gets sold on street corners today.
Brought to the fire
Peri-peri, the flattened chicken, seafood over open coals.
What came with it
- The bird’s eye chilli — Portuguese piri-piri, South African peri-peri
- The spatchcocked chicken, whole and flat over the coals
- Garlic, lemon and oil as the base of the marinade
- Calamari and prawns off the grid rather than out of the fryer
The chilli itself is far older than the line. Portuguese traders brought it from South America to East Africa, where it naturalised; from there it travelled on with Portuguese recipes. The word piri-piri is Swahili and simply means pepper-pepper.
It reached South Africa in numbers only late. Portuguese-speaking families migrated over decades — from Madeira since the late 1800s — but the largest movement was people leaving Angola and Mozambique between 1974 and 1976, as Portuguese colonial rule ended.
What came of it is visible on every larger road: grilled chicken in peri-peri marinade, mostly to take away. For your own fire the interesting part is the technique — open a whole chicken flat so that it is the same thickness throughout and cooks through in forty minutes.
The recipes on this line
Poultry · Peri-peri hoender
Peri-peri chicken
A spatchcocked chicken, marinated overnight in chilli, garlic, lemon and vinegar and cooked for the best part of an hour over medium coals. The hottest dish on this site.
Watch this
Linked, not embedded — opening this page contacts no outside server. The time marks jump straight to the moment.
29:34
English
Travel Trails Tastes
Spicy Piri Piri Chicken on the Braai | Authentic South African Cooking
Ties technique and origin together in one video. For the line page, the chapter on how peri-peri arrived is the point.
- 0:54„How to Spatchcock a Chicken“ — Backbone out, breastbone cracked. The whole technique in ninety seconds.
- 5:45„How Peri Peri Came to South Africa“ — The origin as a chapter of its own — rare in a recipe video, and the reason this one is here.
- 9:35„Cooking Over Fire“ — Laid flat over medium coals, skin side last.
Last checked 2026-09-05
10:02
English
ChilliChump
Piri Piri Chicken Recipe: Nandos Style!
For anyone who knows peri-peri from the chain and wants to know what is actually in it.
- 5:17„Marinade“ — The sauce in the blender: how much chilli actually goes in, on screen rather than in spoonfuls.
- 6:43„Cooking“ — Cooking and basting in turn — the reason the sauce does not burn.
Last checked 2026-09-05