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Cape Braai
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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.

The frikkadel differs from every other meatball in three ways: it is beef, the bread is soaked in milk, and it is baked rather than fried. The name came into Afrikaans from Dutch and before that from French — the same root as the German Frikadelle, but a different dish. It is seasoned with coriander, clove and nutmeg: the same handwriting as boerewors.

Prep
25 min
On the fire
35 min
Serves
6
Effort
easy

When it goes on

Done beforehand

Made in the kitchen. On the table before you light up.

Equipment: Oven

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. Toast the coriander

    Toss the seeds in a dry pan until fragrant and a shade darker, then grind. Untoasted coriander tastes of nothing.

  2. Soak the bread

    Soak the bread in the milk until no liquid is left and mash it fine with a fork.

  3. Mix the meat

    Combine everything loosely — fingertips, no kneading. Work the mixture and you get rubbery meatballs. Chill for ten minutes.

  4. Shape the balls

    Form twelve balls of about a hundred grams each and set them on an oiled tray. They are deliberately large — small frikkadels dry out.

  5. Bake

    Bake at 190 °C for thirty to forty minutes until browned and releasing juice. Do not turn them.

  6. Gravy from the pan juices

    Pour the pan juices into a pot and fry the chopped onion in them until golden. Mix the cornflour into the cold stock, pour in and stir until the gravy thickens. Season with salt and sugar.

  7. Let them stand

    Rest the frikkadels briefly and serve with the gravy.

Tips

  • They can be done at the fire — in a cast-iron pan over medium coals, but then turn them and use a lid.
  • They are better cold on bread the next day than fresh. Which is why you always make double.
  • The apricot chutney is not a garnish. It brings sweetness and acidity to a mixture that would otherwise taste flat.
  • For a braai: make them ahead, chill them, serve them cold. They are one of the few meat dishes that are just as good that way.

South Africa has two kinds of meatball and they should not be confused. One swims in curry sauce and is called a Cape Malay frikkadel. The other comes out of the oven, is the size of a tennis ball, and is simply called a frikkadel.

What separates it from its European cousins is the spicing: coriander, clove, nutmeg — the same trio that sits in boerewors. Know one and you recognise the other instantly.

Why the oven and not the pan? Because they are too big to turn. A hundred-gram frikkadel needs half an hour of steady heat from every side, and a pan cannot do that.

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