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.
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Line of origin · 1652 to about 1900
Trekboers and Voortrekkers
The trekboers were migrant stock farmers of Dutch, German and French descent; their cooking is that of a household which cannot take its oven along.
Signature: solid
This is the line that shows up in most braai writing as the tradition. It is one of eight — but it supplied the equipment everybody uses today.
Brought to the fire
The three-legged pot, sausage as a way of keeping meat, bread without an oven.
What came with it
- The potjie — a cast-iron pot on three legs that stands in the coals
- Boerewors: coarsely cut meat with coriander and vinegar in a casing
- Potbrood and roosterkoek — bread from the pot and off the grid
- Beskuit: twice-baked rusks that keep for months
- Apricot jam as a glaze rather than a spread
The three-legged pot came to the Cape with the Dutch and became the cooking gear of a moving population. The legs have a purpose: the pot stands in the coals, not on a frame. During the Great Trek from 1835 it hung under the ox wagon, protected by a layer of fat, and went back on the fire at the next stop.
The same logic explains the sausage and the rusk. With no refrigeration you turn meat into sausage and dry it; with no oven you bake in the pot or on the grid; and if you do not know when you will next see flour, you bake beskuit that lasts for weeks. None of this is folklore — these are answers to a storage problem.
What this line did not invent at the Cape is the fire itself. The trekboers took over game, drying and open-fire cooking from a practice that was already here, and laid pot, sausage and wheat flour on top of it. That layering is what the cooking is.
The recipes on this line
Meat
Frikkadelle
Done beforehand
Meat
Frikkadelle
Large meatballs with grated onion, toasted coriander and a spoon of apricot chutney, baked in the oven rather than fried. Served with an onion gravy made from the pan juices.
Bread · Vetkoek met maalvleis
Vetkoek with curried mince
Yeast dough deep-fried until golden, split open and filled with mild curried mince. Crisp outside, airy inside — the street food every South African knows.
Meat
Springbokrugstring
Full heat
Meat · Springbokrugstring
Bacon-wrapped springbok loin
Venison loin marinated overnight in red wine, wrapped in bacon and seared over full coals. The leanest meat on this site — and the one where two minutes too long ruins everything.
Meat · Stertpotjie
Cape Malay oxtail potjie
Oxtail with red wine, cumin and curry, four hours in a three-legged pot. Four hours, three and a half of which ask nothing of you.
Meat · Lamspotjie
Lamb potjiekos
Lamb on the bone, layered vegetables and very little liquid, three and a half hours in a cast-iron three-legged pot over low coals. It does not get stirred — that is not a quirk, it is the method.
Meat
Waterblommetjiebredie
Lamb shoulder slow-cooked with the flower spikes of Cape pondweed, white wine and plenty of lemon. The one dish that exists only in the Western Cape, and only in winter.
Sausage
Boerewors
The sausage without which there is no braai. You buy it ready-made — the whole skill is in the fire, and it consists of not making it too hot.
Meat · Karoo-tjops
Karoo lamb chops
Thick lamb chops with rosemary, garlic and lemon, started on their fat edge and done over hot coals in ten minutes. Karoo lambs graze on aromatic semi-desert scrub, which is why this meat needs almost no seasoning.
Meat
Ribbetjies
Pork ribs, first cooked tender in the oven for an hour and a half, then marinated overnight in a chutney glaze and finally taken sticky over mild coals. Without the pre-cooking they stay tough — no marinade will soften a rib on its own.
Meat
Skilpadjies
Medium
Meat
Skilpadjies
Seasoned lamb's liver wrapped in caul fat and cooked crisp over medium coals. The name means little tortoises, and it describes exactly what ends up on the grid.
Fish · Snoek
Snoek with apricot glaze
Butterflied snoek in a hinged grid, basted with a glaze of apricot jam, garlic and butter. On the West Coast this is not a recipe idea, it is an institution.
Meat · Sosaties
Sosaties with apricot
Lamb skewers in a curried apricot marinade, left overnight. The Cape Malay inheritance at the fire — sweet, sour and spiced at once.
Bread
Braaibroodjies
Toasted sandwiches with cheese, tomato, onion and fruit chutney, cooked in a hinged grid over the last of the coals. Reckon on two per person — there is never one left over.
Bread
Potbrood
Yeast bread baked in a cast-iron pot straight in the coals — coals underneath, coals on the lid. Cracking crust, soft crumb, no oven involved.
Bread
Roosterkoek
Yeast dough rolls baked not in an oven but straight on the grid over the last of the coals. Crusty outside, soft inside, and at a push the only side dish you need.
Side · Soetpatats
Sweet potatoes out of the coals
Whole sweet potatoes in foil, 45 minutes beside the coals, then torn open and filled with rosemary butter or cinnamon sugar. They cook themselves while everything else wants attention.
Snack
Biltong
Beef in strips, steeped in vinegar, seasoned with toasted coriander and coarse salt and air-dried for three to six days. No fire involved — and still the most South African thing here.
Sweet
Karringmelkbeskuit
Right at the end
Sweet · Karringmelkbeskuit
Buttermilk rusks
A sweet buttermilk dough, baked, broken into pieces and dried for hours at low heat until it is dry the whole way through. For dunking in coffee, and for nothing else.
Snack
Droëwors
A thin sausage of beef and lamb with plenty of toasted coriander, air-dried rather than cooked. Boerewors's dried sister — and the snack in every South African car.
Sweet
Koeksisters
Plaited strips of dough, deep-fried and plunged straight into ice-cold spiced syrup. Crisp outside, dripping inside — the temperature difference is the whole recipe.
Sweet · Malvapoeding
Malva pudding
A heavy, dark sponge with apricot jam and vinegar, drowned in a cream-and-syrup sauce the moment it comes out of the oven. The sauce has to go on while the cake is hot — once it cools, it will not soak in.
Sweet
Melktert
A thin pastry case with a very soft milk custard and a thick layer of cinnamon sugar on top. Less sweet than anything else here — and the most popular.
Sweet
Pampoenkoekies
Small pumpkin fritters, crisp outside and soft inside, with cinnamon sugar or caramel sauce. In South Africa they are pudding and side dish at once, depending on what goes on top.
Watch this
Linked, not embedded — opening this page contacts no outside server. The time marks jump straight to the moment.
22:58
English
Travel Trails Tastes
How to Make Farm Style Boerewors | My Family Recipe
Shows the whole chain from the counter to the grid. Even if you only ever buy wors, you come away knowing what to look for.
- 2:49„Prepping the meat (70/30 ratio)“ — The ratio of lean beef to fatty pork, shown as whole cuts rather than claimed as a number.
- 12:06„Grinding (8-10 mm plate)“ — The mincer plate. This is where wors parts company with a bratwurst: coarsely cut, not finely emulsified.
- 20:09„Day 2: Boerewors on the coals“ — The coil on the grid — and how slowly it is actually braaied.
Differs from us
In the video the sausage rests uncovered overnight in the fridge. We only call for that with homemade wors — shop-bought comes out half an hour before, and that is all.Last checked 2026-09-05
10:20
English
Wolkberg Artisans
How to make Traditional Boerewors | South African sausage recipe
Forty of its own chapter marks, each labelled with a quantity or a step — closer to an illustrated recipe than a video.
- 0:48„Toast for a few minutes“ — The coriander seed in a dry pan. The one step that separates boerewors from any European sausage.
- 4:04„First grind“ — First pass through the mincer — this is where you see how coarse coarse actually means.
- 4:21„Mix until the meat can form a sticky patty“ — The bind test. If the mix does not stick, the sausage falls apart later.
Last checked 2026-09-05
12:44
English
ChilliChump
Potjiekos: South African Cast-Iron Pot Stew (How To)
Explains not stirring as a method rather than a quirk — exactly where most guides stop.
- 3:10„Brown the meat“ — Browning in the pot — the only moment when anything in a potjie gets stirred.
- 8:35„Why you don't stir potjiekos“ — The heart of it, and why a potjie is not a casserole. Nobody else gives that its own chapter.
Last checked 2026-09-05
7:06
English
Passion for food
How To Make Maggie Pepler's Malva Pudding Recipe
Sticks to a handed-down family recipe rather than the supermarket version.
- 3:47„Making the sweet cream syrup“ — The syrup poured over after baking — the whole texture depends on it.
- 4:36„Making the custard“ — Malva without custard is a dry cake. This is the ratio.
Last checked 2026-09-05