Search Jobs

South African Cuisine

I guess most of us know very little about South African food, which is hardly surprising as many cultures, over many years, have influenced the cuisine to such an extent that it is now hard to work out what is indigenous food, and what is 'settler' food

Most supermarkets now carry Jerky, which is similar to Biltong, salty dried meat, which is actually quite tough to chew, but great if you were out in the bush for days at a time. Meat is still cured this way as a preservative.

South Africa has embraced other cultures foods and depending on where you are, what settlers lived there, will determine the type of food you are able to enjoy.

Settlers came from, Britain, Holland, India and also slaves that were brought to SA also influenced the cuisine.

For the most part, South Africans still cook Pap, which is maize that has been cooked and then fluffed up. They will have this with a meat stew, which can contain any meat. Much of the food will be cooked on open fires outside, a practice westerners latched onto and called, the BBQ.

Pots of stew, Pap, vegetables ( beans, pumpkin, potato, cabbage) with BBQ ribs, is a typical weekend meal. ( gosh I am already wishing I was there).

As I have said, other foods came along and were readily accepted into the SA diet, tomatoes, garlic, ginger, onions, chilli and other spices.

Many of these 'new' foods were introduced by settlers such as the Dutch, now known as 'Cape Dutch',

Curries came from labourers brought over from India, and so forth, so for most part it would be highly unlikely that in any town you would not be able to look around for foodstuff, or a menu that you recognised the name of or recognised the ingredients.

I think like all trips away from our native land, be it holiday or work, we owe it to ourselves to try the indigenous food.

Variety is the spice of life and with a little information you should embrace and enjoy all that SA has to offer with food. For my part I think I would probably not want to try Mashonzha, which is a dish made from the Mopane Worm, and yes it really is a worm, which looks like a caterpillar to me.

So here are just a very few dishes you will see on menus that maybe some knowledge of is helpful:

Frikkadelle: meatballs.

Typical SA chicken pie is Hoenderpastei

Bunny chow or Kota: is simply bread stuffed with a curry.

Isiduda: Pap that has mashed pumpkin

Potjiekos: This is one of those 'BBQ' stews that is cooked in a cast iron pot consisting of meat and vegetables, traditional Afrikaans.

Mealie-Bread This is a sweetish bread with added sweet corn (Phew, thought it was going to be made from mealy worms,)

Finally don't forget that Ostrich is becoming very common as a meat source, which is really no big deal, unless of course you are running after it to catch it for the pot.