Bunny Chow
Overview
Bunny chow is a hollowed loaf of white bread filled with curry, and it comes from the Indian community of Durban in KwaZulu-Natal. The bread is the bowl, the plate and the cutlery, and it is eaten by tearing pieces off the hollowed lid to scoop with. Its history is tied directly to apartheid. The most widely repeated account holds that it developed as a way to sell food to Black customers who were barred from eating in certain restaurants: the bread served as the container, so nothing had to be handed back. It was cheap, portable, filling enough for a day's work, and needed no crockery, which made it well suited to the indentured Indian labourers brought to work the sugarcane fields of KwaZulu-Natal. The name is generally traced to banya chow. Banya was an older term for the Indian trading community in Durban and chow is slang for food. Accounts of the origin do differ and none is settled. The filling is a Durban curry, aromatic with curry leaves, cardamom and cinnamon, made with chickpeas and potatoes and with or without meat, and mutton is the version Durban is best known for.
AFN Heritage Note
Bunny chow originated among the Indian community of Durban, KwaZulu-Natal, descended from indentured labourers brought to work the sugarcane fields. Accounts link its portable bread-bowl form to restrictions on where Black customers could eat under apartheid, and the name is generally traced to banya chow.
Ingredients
Dietary tags are provided by contributors as a guide, not verified by AFN, and they depend on the products you buy. If you have a serious allergy, check every ingredient yourself. Cooking, allergies and your own judgement
Directions
- 1
Heat a pan with the oil over medium heat.
- 2
Stir in the onion, ginger and garlic, cinnamon stick, curry leaves, cardamom pods and curry powder, and cook until the onion looks translucent.
- 3
Add the tomatoes, followed by the meat if using, and stir for 2 to 3 minutes.
- 4
Pour in the chicken broth.
- 5
Add the chickpeas and potatoes.
- 6
Bring to a boil and let it simmer until the sauce thickens, about 25 minutes or more.
- 7
Adjust the salt, pepper and consistency.
- 8
Cut the loaf into halves or quarters and hollow out the centre of each, keeping the removed bread as a lid.
- 9
Spoon the curry into the hollowed bread and top with the reserved bread.
Africook’s Notes
Personal notes from Jennifer Ezeokoli- Use a dense unsliced white loaf. Soft supermarket sandwich bread collapses under the curry within minutes.
- Keep the curry thick. A loose sauce goes straight through the base of the loaf, and this is the most common way bunny chow fails.
- Keep the bread you scoop out. It is the lid, and it is what you tear off to eat the curry with.
- Whole spices go in at the start with the onion so they have time to open up. The cinnamon stick and cardamom pods are removed or eaten around, not ground.
- Quarter loaf, half loaf and full loaf are the standard sizes ordered in Durban. A quarter is a substantial meal for one person.
Reviews
5 reviews
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couldnt get fresh curry leaves in sainsburys so had to use dried ones from the asian shop near me. the smell when those cardamom pods and the cinnamon stick hit the hot oil was unreal sha. tasted just like what i used to buy back home.
herh, 35 minutes cook time is too fast if you want the potatoes to properly absorb all that cardamom and cinnamon flavor. mine needed another 15 mins on low heat so the gravy thickens nicely paa. good taste though oo.
made sure to use halal certified chicken broth for the gravy. the ginger, garlic and curry powder sizzled so nicely with the onions at the start. my kids scooped every bit up with white bread.
half cup of oil was way too much abeg, there was a thick layer floating on top after pouring in the chicken broth and tomatoes. had to spoon out so much oil before serving.
that 1/2 tablespoon of cayenne pepper gave it proper heat! i added extra potatoes to stretch the gravy for my brothers. chickpeas soft nicely in the broth. e sweet o