Meat
Bunny chow
A fiery Durban lamb curry in a hollowed-out quarter loaf of white bread. No plate, no cutlery — the bread is both, and it gets eaten at the end.
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16 recipes
The long afternoon
Some dishes are not meant to feed you quickly but to give the afternoon a shape. A potjie sits over low coals for three hours and asks exactly one thing: that nobody stirs it. The rest of the time belongs to the conversation.
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Meat
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Meat
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 · Murgbene
Marrow bones
Beef marrow bones split lengthways over hot coals until the marrow bubbles, with parsley salsa and toasted bread. Twenty minutes for the richest starter a fire can produce.
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.
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.
Poultry
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.
Side
Side
Umngqusho
Stamped maize and sugar beans, boiled for two hours until everything collapses into something creamy. One pot, two ingredients, and the whole table is fed.
Side · Botterskorsie in die kole
Butternut out of the coals
Halved butternut with onion, garlic and rosemary in the cavity, 45 minutes in foil beside the coals. Chakalaka goes in at the end, and it becomes a main course.
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.
Bread
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.
Sweet
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
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.
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.