South African Food – A Culinary Safari

Nothing in the world beats a Portillo’s Italian Beef Sandwich, but that won’t stop us from traveling the world to try and find something even better.

Once a month during the school year, we post an online activity for our group.  This month we ask that the students traveling to South Africa with us read this article, pick at least one of the recipes we share, shop for the groceries, and make a South African dish at home.  When they’re done, we want them to come back here and share (in the comments section) what the experience was like.

I love travel. There’s something about facing the unknown with each and every adventure we’ve had that is unbelievably exciting to me. There are always a few things we know we’re going to do, of course – the big monuments, landmarks, famous churches, important historical sites, cool museums… But the real fun comes for me when we don’t have a script or an itinerary to follow.

The best time for exploring, for trying something new, for facing that unknown is lunch time. At lunch time, the TAP teachers always do their best to find the food you’re not going to be able to get anywhere else. The regional delicacies, the local delights, the culinary gems…

I call it the “Portillo’s Factor.” The way I see it, every time I have friends or family from out of town come in, they don’t want to go to the local McDonald’s, Chili’s, or Chipotle – that’s the same food they can get at home. What you want to show them is regional Chicago food like Portillo’s for Italian beef (yes, it’s Chicago food, they don’t have it in Italy, New York, or anywhere else) or Chicago style hot dogs, or to get some Chicago style pizza – either deep dish where my favorite is Lou Malnati’s or Chicago style thin crust (yes, that’s a thing) where I think the best is Vito and Nick’s. I really want my guests to experience real Chicago food, stuff they can’t get at home.

Caccio y Pepe – Spaghetti with cheese and black pepper. Sounds so simple, but I swear that when I had this in Rome, I found out what Heaven tastes like.

I feel the same way when I travel. I want to find the “Portillo’s” of every place I go – whether it’s Primanti Brother’s sandwiches in Pittsburgh, the Juicy Lucy burger in Minneapolis, toasted ravioli in St. Louis, or Caccio y Pepe in Rome, Patissiere de Belum in Lisbon, or souvlaki in Athens. I want the good stuff.  (By the way, you should eat all of the things I just listed – they are some of the best foods I’ve ever had).

Sometimes, to get to know the local cuisines before we get there, I like to find some regional recipes online and try that out at home. That’s exactly what I’ve done in preparation for our trip to South Africa. I talked to some friends, did some Googling, and found seven recipes I wanted to try before we traveled to Africa.

What I found is that South African food is incredibly diverse. A lot like American food, it takes from a ton of different cultures. Of course there’s an influence from the indigenous tribes, but there’s also a particular flavor that comes from the Dutch settlers, some from the English, a lot of Portuguese, and even some from India and central Asia, which shouldn’t be a surprise considering trading routes from Europe to India is what led the Portuguese explorers and the Dutch and English settlers to land in South Africa in the first place. What this has resulted in is an incredibly diverse and amazingly flavorful cuisine loaded with amazing dishes for us to try.

The first thing I decided to make was…

Boerewors being cooked on the braai.  I didn’t quite make mine look like that.

Boerewors Burgers and Monkey Gland Sauce (click on the name of the dish for the recipe)

Boer is an Afrikaans word for farmer. Wors, is kind of like the South African version of wurst (think bratwurst, currywurst, liverwurst…), which just means sausage. So, boerewors is just farmer’s sausage, and I’m assuming it’s made by farmers, rather than from farmers. Boerewors is a popular sausage in South Africa and there are some pretty strict rules about what it has to be made of to be called boerewors. It has to be 90% meat – always beef mixed with lamb, pork, or lamb and pork. The other 10% of the sausage is made up of spices like coriander, pepper, allspice, cloves, and nutmeg) and other ingredients that give it a flavor that’s very different from the Italian, Polish, and German sausages we’re used to around here.

Now, the tricky part to making Boerewors was the fact that I’d never made sausage before. I don’t have a machine to get the meat inside the casing, and I don’t have a clue where to even get sausage casings. Instead, I decided to make the meat into Boerewors burgers instead.  I figured that way I’d at least get the authentic flavors if not the right textures.  (In a very similar way, I tried to make homemade gyros after we went to Greece. I couldn’t get the right texture, so instead I decided to make a Sloppy Joe type dish with the gyros seasonings, lamb, and beef – I called it Sloppy Zeus.  It was really good.) 

I wanted to have Monkey Gland Sauce, a popular South African condiment with my burgers. A friend of mine who is from South Africa originally told me that Monkey Gland Sauce is the go-to condiment for chicken, burgers, sausage, steaks, and pork chops. I was a little concerned about buying, preparing, and eating glands from a monkey, but it turned out that the name is just a funny name – there’s no monkey parts at all in monkey gland sauce. It’s made up onion, garlic, ginger, fruit, mustard, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, and wine. The most popular theory about the name is that around the time the recipe was being developed, there were a lot of news stories about monkey glands being used as medicines that would help keep you young.

Making monkey gland sauce was pretty time consuming, with all the chopping and stuff, but it was incredible. I used it on the Boerewors burgers the first night, then used the leftovers on steaks, chicken, and then made the last bit into a South African Sloppy Joe the last night. Everything was incredible, and my kids keep asking me to make more monkey gland sauce.  Even though it took quite a bit of effort to make, it was worth it, because it lasted for 5-6 meals.

The Boerewors burgers were actually really simple to make. They had a really nice flavor, and I’d make them again sometime for sure.  I know I didn’t quite get the authentic South African experience with my burgers, so I’m really looking forward to trying some real boerewors when we get to Johannesburg.

Piri Piri Chicken and Chakalaka

Nando’s famous Piri Piri chicken. We’ll be sure to find a Nando’s while we’re in South Africa.

The first recipe my South African friend told me to try was something called piri piri sauce. When I looked for recipes, I kept finding piri piri chicken, and it kept talking about a chicken restaurant called Nando’s. I remember seeing a Nando’s in Nottingham, England, and one of the students that was with me at the time really wanted to go there, because it was the favorite restaurant of one of the One Direction boys. We didn’t go it, because it looked like it might be a slower paced restaurant than we had time for. Now I’m kicking myself, because I wish I’d had a chance to try the authentic piri piri chicken Nando’s is famous for. The restaurant chain started in South Africa (they also have locations in England, Australia, Canada, Malaysia, Singapore, and the East Coast of the United States), so I’m hoping we have a chance to try it while we’re on the trip.

I couldn’t find Piri Piri sauce at the grocery store, but I found it in the gift shop at the Brookfield Zoo. As odd as that is, it was even weirder that it was in the gift shop near the North American animals, far far away from Rhinos, Lions, or Zebras.

Making piri piri chicken was actually pretty easy, but I’m not sure how authentic it is, because I couldn’t find African piri piri chili peppers at the store. The recipes I looked at online must have known that pepper wasn’t going to be easy to find in the US, so they gave alternatives to get a similar flavor and amount of heat. All I had to do was marinate the chicken in the piri piri sauce mixture overnight, then grill the chicken. All in all, it was pretty simple.

This summer, while I was at the Brookfield Zoo with my South African friend, I noticed one of the gift shops (the one by the Great Bear Wilderness) was selling piri piri sauce. My friend had just told me about the recipe, so that’s probably why it caught my eye.  I bought a mild and a hot version, but for this I made my own sauce homemade.  A few weeks later, I made some chicken with the bottled mild piri piri sauce.  It was good, but the home made stuff was much better.

Chakalaka, on the other hand, was a little more time consuming, just because there was a bunch of chopping to do. It was worth it, though. Chakalaka is essentially a South African bean dish that’s like American baked beans on super African steroids. It was delicious. I found a lot of recipes that were just sort of like a vegetable relish to put on top of bread or meat, but when I found the one that was more of a bean side dish, I knew that’s what I wanted to try. Basically it’s garlic, onions, chili peppers, and ginger all chopped up and fried in a pan for a bit, then some spices like the Indian spice garam masala and coriander thrown in, which makes it smell absolutely incredible. Next, you toss in tomatoes, carrots, bell peppers, and your can of baked beans. It was my favorite dish that I made for this project, and my kids loved it. So good.  Every year my kids’ school has a start of the year picnic and people bring a dish to share – next fall I’m making Chakalaka, and that will be the true test, because there are two families at the school that are originally from South Africa.  I can’t wait to see what they think of my version of their dish.

Bredie (South African Stew)

Honestly, this bredie looks way more appetizing than what I made. Mine would not win any beauty contests, but it tasted great.

A bredie is a traditional South Africa dish – the word itself is an Afrikaans word that means stew, and the style of cooking actually comes from Malaysian slaves that were brought to South Africa during the years of colonization.

A basic bredie is made of lamb (although you could use beef if you wanted), onion, potatoes, wine, and a few seasonings. Usually a few extra vegetables are added – tomatoes (called a tamatiebredie), cabbage (Koolbredie), and green beans (Groenboontjiebredie) are the most popular. When I made my bredie, I decided to add all three vegetables, because… well, why not?  So what I had was a Tamatiekoolgroenboontjiebredie!

It’s a pretty simple dish, but takes a while to cook properly. The lamb (or beef) is cooked slowly in the wine, onions, and seasonings for about an hour and a half to really make the meat tender to the point that it’s just about falling apart.  I didn’t think my kids would like this one, because, honestly, it’s a really ugly looking dish – it’s all brown and unappealing – so I made it when they were visiting grandma.  I loved it, and it was even better as leftovers then next couple of days after all the flavors had a chance to really meld together.  I think it’s a really good dish for those bitterly cold winter days.

Someone please make a Bobotie that looks like that. Mine wasn’t even close, and I really want to try a good one.

Bobotie and Yellow Rice

Bobotie is a South African meatloaf. Made with raisins, fruit chutney, and sometimes nuts, it’s entirely different from the meatloafs we make here at home. Bobotie also has an egg custard over the top, that gives the dish a variety of textures and flavors. The recipe was likely brought to South Africa from Dutch settlers who spent time in the Dutch Indonesian colonies, so it’s a combination of Indonesian, Dutch, and South African cooking styles.

A lot of time when I cook, I only sort-of follow the recipe – adding and subtracting what I want, making the dish my own. With bobotie, I followed the recipe exactly, and it did not turn out well at all. The custard slid right off the top of the meat into the seams along the edge of the pan. The cooking time was way too long, which led to really dry, kind of burnt meat. The flavors were really good, and I can guess how it was supposed to taste, but my attempt at Bobotie was a fail. It was good enough, though, even as messed up as it was, that I will try it again.

Yellow rice is a popular side dish in South Africa. It is another recipe from the Cape Malays (those Malaysian slaves). It’s really easy to make – just plain rice with salt, turmeric, sugar, cinnamon, butter, and raisins mixed in. I did not like this one. One of the comments on the recipe page I read said that it was overly sweet, and I agree. The cinnamon, raisins, and sugar gave it a flavor that tasted like really good oatmeal, but it wasn’t oatmeal, it was rice. The texture was what got me – it tasted like oatmeal, but had the rice consistency. I wouldn’t have minded something that sweet for breakfast, but as a side dish with my burnt, dry meatloaf, it wasn’t good. Nobody ate more than a few bites of it. However, I hope we do get to try some in South Africa so I can see at least if I made it right.

Since my attempts at Bobotie an Yellow Rice didn’t go so well, I’m not posting a video or recipe, but I’d love it if one of you tried to make these dishes and shared your culinary adventure with all of us.  If you find a good recipe or make an awesome video, we’ll add it to this post where my video/recipe would have gone.

Overall, I’m really excited about eating in South Africa. Almost everything I made was delicious, so I can’t wait to try the real thing, and the recipes that didn’t work so well, I’m eager to see them made the right way. In the end, I don’t think there’s a better way to experience a new culture than through their food. Think about it, just through the seven recipes I tried, I learned about South Africa being influenced by indigenous tribes, Malaysian slaves, Indian immigrants, English colonists, Dutch traders, and Portuguese explorers. It was like a history lesson on a plate.

Now it’s your turn. Sometime in the next few weeks we’d like you to try one (or more) of these recipes. Take some pictures, shoot some video, write up a reflection or a narrative of the shopping/cooking/eating process and share it with us on this site. Let us know about your experience cooking and what you thought of South African food. Happy eating.