Meat · In Afrikaans: 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.
The word joins "saus" for the spiced marinade and "sate" for the skewer. The combination of curry, fruit and vinegar comes from the kitchen of the people the Dutch East India Company brought to the Cape from Southeast Asia in slavery.
- Prep
- 30 min
- Marinating
- 12 hr
- On the fire
- 12 min
- Serves
- 4
How hot
Hot
You can hold your hand over the grid for 4 seconds · ≈ 200–230 °C
Every coal stage explained →When it goes on
The main round
The actual food: wors, chicken, fish, skewers.
Equipment: Grid · Skewers
This line
Spices, the sweet-sour handling of meat, marinades, the skewer.
Method
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Cook the marinade
Soften the onion in the oil over medium heat, then add garlic and ginger for a minute. Stir in curry powder and cumin and toast them briefly in the fat — added dry, the spices taste of flour.
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Deglaze and reduce
Add vinegar, jam and salt, bring to the boil and simmer gently for about half an hour. The sugars caramelise and the marinade thickens.
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Cool it completely
This is not a footnote. Warm marinade part-cooks the surface of raw meat and makes it tough later.
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Marinate
Mix the lamb cubes with the cold marinade, cover and refrigerate for at least twelve hours, ideally 24. Turn once or twice.
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Soak the apricots
Soak the dried apricots in hot water for 15 to 20 minutes so they do not burn on the skewer.
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Skewer
Thread meat, apricot and onion alternately, not too tightly — heat has to pass between the pieces. Keep the leftover marinade.
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Boil the marinade
Boil the reserved marinade hard for five minutes. That turns it into sauce and makes it safe for basting.
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Grill
Cook over coals at four seconds on the hand test for ten to twelve minutes, turning regularly. Baste with the boiled marinade only in the last five minutes — any earlier and the sugar burns.
Tips
- Some recipes put a bay leaf between every piece. That is the older Cape Malay way and worth trying — the leaves are not eaten.
- The meat needs the full night. After four hours only the surface tastes of marinade.
- Leftover sauce goes very well with pap and keeps for a week in a jar.
Sosaties show that South African cooking is not a grill culture with steaks but a cuisine with history. Curry, turmeric, fruit and vinegar — that combination did not come from the veld but reached Cape Town by way of Java and Malaysia.
In practice this means the meat is not seasoned but steeped, and for a long time. The vinegar works overnight, the jam supplies the sugar that later caramelises at the fire, and the apricots between the cubes soak full of marinade.
One detail makes the difference: the marinade is cooked twice — once before it meets the meat, for flavour, and once afterwards, before it goes to the table as sauce.
Where it comes from
- Where the word comes from
- Afrikaans, from Malay · Literally „from *saus* (marinade) and *sate* (skewer)“ The word carries its origin in it — the two halves come from different languages.
No other dish in this collection shows its origin as plainly as this one, and it does so in the word itself. Sate is the skewer from the Indonesian archipelago, saus the marinade from Dutch. Two languages, one word, one dish.
The people who brought the skewer did not come by choice. From 1658 they were taken to the Cape in bondage; what they brought in technique and spice met Dutch household cooking there, and whatever the Cape had to offer. Out of that meeting comes the combination that makes a sosatie: meat, fruit and acid on the same skewer.
The dried apricot is not decoration. It takes up marinade overnight, softens at the fire and gives off sugar that caramelises — which is why sosaties must never see full coals. Braai them too hot and you get black fruit and raw lamb.
On the origins page sosaties carry two lines side by side, Cape Malay and trekboer. That is not indecision but the statement: the combination is the point.
Goes with this
Side · Pap
Pap — stywe pap and krummelpap
Snack
Braaipastei
Medium
Snack · Braaipastei