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Braai Boerewors with Chakalaka
- Intermediate
- 75 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with char used as punctuation, warm spice humming through the middle, ending saline and clean.
Ingredients
- 1.5kg boerewors in its traditional single coil (beef-and-pork sausage with coriander seed, clove and nutmeg); by South African regulation, at least 90% meat, and the butcher's blend is his reputation
- Two long skewers or a hinged grid (rooster) to keep the coil intact: the coil is never cut before cooking
- Chakalaka: 1 onion, 2 carrots grated, 1 pepper, 2 tbsp curry powder, 1 can chopped tomatoes, 1 can baked beans, chili to taste, simmered 20 min
- Pap (stiff white maize porridge, ugali's southern cousin, see the East African shelf) or fresh rolls (then it is a boerewors roll)
- Wood fire burned to coals; the braai is wood-fire culture, and gas is tolerated the way decaf is tolerated
Equipment
Grill · Grater / zester
The skills inside
The words inside
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Pin the coil flat with crossed skewers or clamp it in the grid.
- Grill over medium coals 15–20 min, turning the whole coil as one piece, until deep brown and just cooked through. NEVER prick it; the coriander-scented fat is the flavor, and a pricked wors weeps its soul into the fire. 20 min
- Chakalaka: fry onion and curry powder, add carrots, pepper, tomatoes, beans; simmer to a relish both saucy and chunky.
- Rest the coil 5 min; cut into lengths at the table; serve with pap and chakalaka, or thumbed into a roll with the relish as the sauce. 5 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Grilling over live coals 77 recipes
- The fire was ready before the food was: coals evenly covered in grey ash with no flames licking through and no raw smoke coming off, and a hot zone and a cooler one both available.
- The grate was hot and clean when the food landed, and the food released cleanly from it when the time came to turn rather than tearing away.
- Marks are browned, not burnt: deep colour where the metal touched, with no carbon flaking off and no soot transferred onto the food.
- The interior reaches its target with a thin gradient, not charred outside and cold within, and not driven through by a flare-up.
- What comes off the fire smells of fire and food only: no raw wood smoke, no fuel, nothing acrid at the back of the nose.
Where it goes wrong It went on over live flames instead of settled coals, so the outside charred bitter in the flare-ups while the middle stayed cold, and everything on the plate tastes of soot.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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