In South Africa, food is good everywhere, both in restaurants and in private homes. At the base of everyone’s diet, both white and colored, are meat, fish, vegetables, and fruit, which the territory produces in abundance and of excellent quality. Each ethnicity naturally adds touches of exoticism, for example, in sauces, spices, various seasonings, or cooking techniques.
What to eat in South Africa: typical dishes
A must in South African meat cuisine are grilled preparations: the braai, as barbecue is called, is present everywhere. A good braai always includes spiced sausages, of Teutonic origin, and various cuts of meat, ranging from steak to spiced ribs. When the colder season arrives, barbecues are set aside in favor of fragrant stews, made with beef or veal, but also lamb, such as waterblommetjie breedie, where lamb and mutton meat is slow-braised together with the shoots of an aquatic plant that only grows in the water bodies of the Western Cape.
In a country so rich in wildlife, game cannot be missing from the tables, generally much appreciated also by tourists: antelope, kudu, crocodile, or warthog are considered real delicacies.
Another important chapter is fish, which the two oceans provide abundantly and in all varieties, from shellfish to the lively Cape salmon, to snoek, the quintessential South African fish, prepared smoked, grilled, on coals, and also dried. Many ethnic dishes, whose names also appear on restaurant menus.
The Chakalaka, for example, is a vegetable salad with chili sauce, of Malay origin, served with meat and pap, a kind of white polenta made from local maize. Bobotie, a typical dish of the Malay community, consists of minced and spiced meat, covered with an egg-based cream and baked. The Achaar is a very spicy pickled vegetable salad of Indian origin.
The Mala are boiled and then fried intestines, a typical African delicacy; while Frikkadel, lightly spiced meatballs, are a Dutch heritage. Finally, the wines, pride and glory of South Africa, thanks to the richness of the soil and the Mediterranean climate of the Cape, with hot summers and rainy winters.
