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.
50 recipes
Recipes
Every recipe tells you how hot the coals need to be, which wood suits it, and where in the afternoon it belongs. And where it came from: the sources it was checked against are listed underneath.
Occasion
Dish
Meat
How hot
Time on the fire
When to start
Equipment
Effort
Origin
Season
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Meat
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.
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
Gatsby
A whole baguette packed with vinegar-soaked chips, meat and hot sauce, cut into six. Not a sandwich for one — a meal for half the street.
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 · T-bone tjop
T-bone with braai salt
A thick T-bone over full coals, seasoned with home-mixed braai salt of toasted coriander, salt and paprika. Two seconds on the hand test — this is searing, not cooking.
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 · Karoo-tjops
Karoo lamb chops
Thick lamb chops with rosemary, garlic and lemon, started on their fat edge and done over hot coals in ten minutes. Karoo lambs graze on aromatic semi-desert scrub, which is why this meat needs almost no seasoning.
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
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.
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.
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.
Fish
Fish
Smoorsnoek
Done beforehand
Fish
Smoorsnoek
Smoked snoek flaked and braised with onion, tomato and potato, then folded through rice. A leftovers dish that beats the original.
Fish · Calamari op die kole
Calamari off the grid
Squid tubes and tentacles, an hour in garlic, chilli and lemon, then three minutes a side over full coals. Longer would be the mistake.
Fish · Snoek
Snoek with apricot glaze
Butterflied snoek in a hinged grid, basted with a glaze of apricot jam, garlic and butter. On the West Coast this is not a recipe idea, it is an institution.
Side
Side · Biltongslaai
Biltong salad
Rocket, avocado, feta and mango with thinly sliced biltong and a honey-mustard vinaigrette. Ten minutes of work, and the biltong comes ready-sliced out of the packet.
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.
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 · 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
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
Monkey Gland Sauce
Done beforehand
Sauce · Monkey Gland Sauce
Monkey gland sauce
A dark, sweet-and-sour steak sauce of chutney, tomato sauce, Worcestershire and onion. On South African menus since the 1930s — and, to get it out of the way, containing no monkey glands whatsoever.
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
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.
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.
The afternoon from start to finish
What goes on the fire, and when
A braai is an order of events, not a list. The fire cools down as the afternoon goes on, and every dish has its place in that. Left to right: what goes on the hot grid first, and what comes last. The figure on the right is how long it needs at the fire.
-
Done beforehand
- Biltong salad 20 min
- Bobotie 45 min
- Bunny chow 1 hr 45 min
- Chakalaka 20 min
- Chakalaka pasta salad 12 min
- Copper penny salad 15 min
- Frikkadelle 35 min
- Gatsby 30 min
- Monkey gland sauce 20 min
- Pap — stywe pap and krummelpap 40 min
- Potato bake 1 hr 15 min
- Sheba 1 hr
- Smoorsnoek 25 min
- Three bean salad 5 min
- Three-colour curry pasta salad 12 min
- Umngqusho 2 hr
- Vetkoek with curried mince 30 min
-
First on the fire
-
The main round
-
Once the meat is off
-
Right at the end