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Cape Braai
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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.

In South Africa boerewors is legally protected. At least 90 percent meat from beef, pork, lamb or goat, no more than 30 percent fat, no offal beyond the casing. That is why it tastes nothing like a bratwurst: it is coarsely cut meat with coriander, not a fine emulsion.

Prep
10 min
On the fire
20 min
Serves
6
Effort
easy
Boerewors coiled into a spiral on a grid over the coals
Ossewa · CC BY-SA 4.0

How hot

Gentle

You can hold your hand over the grid for 8 seconds · ≈ 150–175 °C

Every coal stage explained →

Which wood

Rooikrans

spicy, resinous

More on this wood →

When it goes on

The main round

The actual food: wors, chicken, fish, skewers.

Equipment: Grid

This line

Trekboers and Voortrekkers1652 to about 1900

The three-legged pot, sausage as a way of keeping meat, bread without an oven.

Method

  1. Out of the fridge half an hour before

    Let the wors come up to room temperature on the counter. Fridge-cold sausage takes too long on the outside before the middle is warm — and that is exactly when it splits.

  2. Wait until the coals settle

    Never braai over flames. The coals want a grey coat of ash, and you should be able to hold your hand a hand's width above the grid for eight seconds. If you can only manage four, wait another ten minutes. That is the whole trick, and it is the mistake nearly everyone makes.

  3. Pin the coil

    Roll the sausage flat into a spiral and push two skewers through it crosswise. That way you can turn the whole thing in one movement without it falling apart.

  4. On the grid, then leave it alone

    Lay it on and do not touch it for ten minutes. If fat drips into the fire and a flare shoots up, move the sausage aside — do not put it out with water.

  5. Turn it exactly once

    After about ten minutes, turn it with tongs. Never pierce it with a fork: that is the juice you were trying to keep. Ten minutes more.

  6. Done when it feels firm

    Press it with the tongs. Plump and springy means done; soft and yielding means it needs longer. If you want certainty, cut off one end and look — nothing inside should still glisten pink.

  7. Rest it five minutes

    Off the grid, onto the board, five minutes, then cut into thumb-length pieces. Cut it straight away and the juice ends up on the board.

Tips

  • If you avoid only one mistake, make it this one — too hot. A split wors is always a wors braaied too hot, never one braaied too long.
  • It is done sooner than you think: 20 minutes is enough. Wors is not a bratwurst you roll around for 40.
  • Leftovers go on bread cold the next morning, with chutney. In South Africa that is simply called breakfast.
  • In a roll with fried onions and monkey gland sauce it is a boerie roll, the standard food at every sports field and fundraiser in the country.

Boerewors is why nobody in South Africa asks what is being served at a braai. It is on every grid, it is cheap enough for any occasion, and its composition is written into state regulation rather than only into tradition — which few sausages can claim.

You do not make it yourself. You buy it from the butcher who coiled it that morning, and the only thing left to get wrong is the fire. Wors splits over full heat, the fat runs into the coals, the flame comes back, and you end up with charcoal outside and raw inside. Eight seconds on the hand test — the call everyone at the Cape knows, and ignores anyway.

What has to be in it. At least 90 percent meat, no more than 30 percent fat, no offal beyond the casing, no mechanically separated meat; use game and you must name the species. It is seasoned with toasted coriander, pepper, clove, allspice and vinegar. Shopping abroad, that is the list you check against — anything without coriander is not wors, whatever the label says.

And if you do want to make your own: grind coarsely (8–10 mm), 70 percent lean beef to 30 percent fatty pork belly, toast the coriander seed in a dry pan first, bind with vinegar, fill hog casing loosely and dry it uncovered in the fridge overnight. The two recipe sources below spell it out. None of that changes the fire — homemade wors wants gentle coals too.

Where it comes from

Where the word comes from
Afrikaans · Literally „farmer’s sausage“ A false friend abroad: what a German butcher sells as Bauernwurst is scalded and fine.

Boerewors comes out of keeping food. If you had stock and no refrigeration, whatever was not eaten at once became sausage — coarsely cut, heavily salted, bound with vinegar. The vinegar was not a flavour decision but the preservation, and it is still in there although refrigerators exist.

The name is younger than the thing. Boer means farmer, wors means sausage; the compound describes not a recipe but a provenance — what was made on the farm, as against what you bought.

What happened next is unusual. On 23 November 1990 Government Notice R. 2718 appeared under the Foodstuffs, Cosmetics and Disinfectants Act of 1972 and set out what boerewors is: at least 90 per cent total meat content, no more than 30 per cent fat, no offal beyond the casing, no mechanically recovered meat. That makes it one of the few foods in the country whose composition is written into the gazette rather than only into custom. In 2022 R. 2410 came alongside it, covering the classification and marking of raw processed meat products generally.

What changed along the way is the fire. On the farm the sausage lay over wood coals because there was nothing else; today it lies there because it tastes better — and because wors splits over coals that are too hot. The rest has stayed: the coil, the coriander, the vinegar.

Sources for this section

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After recipes by

Goes with this

Sauce · Monkey Gland Sauce

Monkey gland sauce

Total time
30 min
Serves
10

Snack · Braaipastei

Braai pie

Total time
40 min
Serves
6
Heat of the coals
medium
Equipment
Hinged grid