Side
Chakalaka
A hot vegetable relish with curry, carrot, peppers and baked beans in tomato sauce. Eaten warm, at room temperature or cold, and served next to the pap rather than on the grid.
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22 recipes
No meat at a meat fire
A braai without meat sounds like a contradiction in South Africa, but it works — as long as you do more than leave out the meat and keep the sides. These stand on their own: halloumi off the grid, butternut out of the coals, stuffed mushrooms.
Occasion
Dish
Meat
How hot
Time on the fire
When to start
Equipment
Effort
Origin
Season
No meat only
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Side
Side · Chakalaka-pastaslaai
Chakalaka pasta salad
Fusilli with chakalaka, baked beans and a spoon of mayonnaise. Four ingredients, ten minutes' work — and the hottest salad on the table.
Side · Koperpennie-slaai
Copper penny salad
Carrots cut into rings with pepper and onion, drowned in a hot sweet-sour tomato sauce and left overnight. The name comes from the shape of the slices.
Side · Pap
Pap — stywe pap and krummelpap
White maize meal, water and salt, and nothing else. Change the ratio and you get either a block you can slice or a crumbly heap — the two sides that go with everything off the fire.
Side · Aartappelbak
Potato bake
Thinly sliced potatoes layered with onion, cream and brown onion soup powder, an hour and a half in the oven. The side that is finished at any braai before the fire is even lit.
Side · Driebone slaai
Three bean salad
Green beans, butter beans and kidney beans in a sweet-sour dressing, best made the day before. The salad on every bring-and-braai table.
Side · Kerrie-noedelslaai
Three-colour curry pasta salad
Tricolour fusilli in a sweet-sour curry dressing, left overnight. In South Africa it is kerrie-noedelslaai, and no bring-and-braai is without it.
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 · Halloumi op die kole
Braai halloumi with fynbos honey
Thick slices of halloumi over hot coals, then dressed with honey, lemon and chilli. Eight minutes from packet to plate — the fastest thing at the fire.
Side · Gevulde sampioene
Stuffed braai mushrooms
Large brown mushrooms filled with feta, garlic and thyme, in foil over medium coals. The one vegetarian item that does not look like an apology next to a steak.
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 · 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.
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
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.
Sauce
Sauce
Sheba
A slowly reduced tomato and onion sauce that belongs to pap the way butter belongs to bread. An hour on a low flame is all it needs — but it really does need that.
Sweet
Sweet · Braaibanane
Braai bananas
Bananas in their skins, split lengthways and filled with chocolate, twelve minutes in the last of the coals. They cook in the last of the coals while the table is being cleared.
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.