Meat
Bobotie
Spiced beef mince with chutney, raisins and soaked bread, baked under a golden egg custard. If South Africa has a national dish, this is it.
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22 recipes
With children at the fire
Children eat with you and want to help. None of these recipes are spicy, none need half an hour of attention at the grid, and each has a step you can hand over — threading skewers, basting, turning. There is something sweet out of the last coals at the end.
Occasion
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Meat
How hot
Time on the fire
When to start
Equipment
Effort
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Meat
Meat
Frikkadelle
Done beforehand
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.
Meat · Rashers
Pork belly rashers
Thinly cut pork belly in a curry and honey marinade, crisp in twenty minutes over medium coals. The side that lies next to the wors on every South African grid.
Meat · Sosaties
Sosaties with apricot
Lamb skewers in a curried apricot marinade, left overnight. The Cape Malay inheritance at the fire — sweet, sour and spiced at once.
Sausage
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.
Side
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 · 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 · 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 · Vetkoek met maalvleis
Vetkoek with curried mince
Yeast dough deep-fried until golden, split open and filled with mild curried mince. Crisp outside, airy inside — the street food every South African knows.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
Sweet
Peppermint Crisp-tert
Right at the end
Sweet · Peppermint Crisp-tert
Peppermint Crisp tart
Caramel, cream and crushed mint chocolate between coconut biscuits, left in the fridge overnight. No oven, no fire, twenty minutes of work — and the pudding every South African child recognises.
Snack
Snack
Braaipastei
Medium
Snack · Braaipastei
Braai pie
Puff pastry filled with wors, cheese and chakalaka, baked golden in a hinged grid over medium coals. Proof that pastry belongs at a fire.