Skip to content
Cape Braai
DE
← All recipes

Side · In Afrikaans: Mielies

Mielies off the fire

Corn cobs, first cooked in foil and then charred open over the coals, with herb or curry butter. Foil first, then straight onto the coals: that is what makes it soft inside and dark outside.

Mielie reaches Afrikaans from the Portuguese milho and simply means maize. At the roadside in South Africa the cobs go straight into the coals with no foil at all — the version here is for people who want them evenly cooked.

Prep
10 min
On the fire
22 min
Serves
8
Effort
easy
Mielies for the braai, husked and ready for the grid
Zs6hz · 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

Once the meat is off

The coals are dropping off. Now bread and braaibroodjies go on.

Equipment: Grid · Foil

This line

Shisa nyama20th century to today

Braai as a public affair, butchery and fire in one place, fatty cuts, pap and chakalaka as standard.

Fresh at the Western Cape January · February · March · November · December

Method

  1. Make the butter

    For the herb butter, mix everything and chill. For the curry butter, fry garlic, ginger and curry powder gently in a little of the butter for two minutes, cool, then stir into the rest — curry powder stirred in dry tastes of flour.

  2. Oil the cobs

    Rub the husked cobs with oil and salt lightly. Wrap each one individually in foil.

  3. Cook in the foil

    Cook for about 20 minutes over medium coals, turning often. The foil keeps the moisture in the cob — without it the kernels go leathery before they take colour.

  4. Unwrap and char

    Take the foil off and lay the cobs open over the coals for two to three minutes, until some kernels go dark. That is the flavour you came to the fire for rather than the pot.

  5. Butter and serve

    Spread the butter on at once and generously, then salt and pepper. It has to melt on a hot cob — on a cooled one it just sits there.

Tips

  • You can skip the foil, but it takes longer and wants more attention: 10 to 15 minutes directly over medium coals, turned every two minutes.
  • Leftover chakalaka? Stir half a cup into 200 g of soft butter. It is the most South African of all the butter options.
  • Pre-cooked supermarket cobs only need the last three minutes open over the coals. The difference to fresh ones is still obvious.

Mielies are the side dish nobody plans and everybody eats. They do not really need a recipe, they need two decisions: foil or no foil, and what butter goes on top.

The foil is a question of result, not convenience. Without it the cob cooks from the outside in and goes leathery at the tips; with it, it steams in its own moisture and cooks evenly. You collect the dark spots afterwards, in three minutes open over the coals.

And the butter is not an afterthought. At a Cape Town roadside you get your cob with nothing but salt — at home the herb or curry butter is the reason none are left at the end.

Watch this

Linked, not embedded — opening this page contacts no outside server. The time marks jump straight to the moment.

After recipes by

Goes with this