Afrikaner South African
Boerewors: spiral coriander sausage.
Malva Pudding
A sweet and sticky baked dessert served with a hot cream sauce
View page →Afrikaner cuisine descended from 17th-century Dutch, French Huguenot, and German settlers, blended with Khoisan indigenous food knowledge, then adapted across the trekking inland through the 1800s. The cuisine is meat-and-pap (cornmeal porridge) heavy, slow-cooked, and centered on the braai (barbecue) culture — every Afrikaner has a braai every weekend. Boerewors is the spiced beef-and-pork sausage coiled into a wide spiral, grilled over open coals. Biltong is the air-dried-and-spiced beef jerky, made from cuts hung in dry chambers for weeks; the spice is coriander-pepper-salt-vinegar. Malva pudding is the warm sticky apricot-jam sponge cake served with vanilla custard. Melktert is the cinnamon-dusted milk-custard tart. Bobotie crosses over from Cape Malay. The cuisine is meat-heavy, sweet-dessert-loving, and the foundational South African inheritance.
Start Here
Coarse-ground beef-and-pork sausage spiced with coriander, nutmeg, allspice, and vinegar, stuffed into a single long casing and coiled into a wide spiral. Grilled whole over open coals at every braai.
Why start here · Boerewors is South Africa's national sausage. Every household has a butcher whose recipe they swear by. The coiled spiral and coriander-spice combination are non-negotiable.
Beef strips marinated in vinegar, salt, coriander, and black pepper, then hung in dry-air chambers for 5-14 days until the outside hardens and the inside remains slightly moist.
Why start here · Biltong is the meat-preservation that defines Afrikaner trekboers (cattle nomads) — three weeks on horseback with no refrigeration required. Now eaten universally across South Africa.
The Pantry
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Herbs & Spices
How They Cook
Techniques that define this cuisine
Kindred Kitchens
Cuisines built on the same signature ingredients
Other regions
Siblings within South African — each its own tradition.
