South African Recipes

From Classic South African Kota to Biltong, Beetroot Pancakes to Malva Pudding. Everything South African cooks, as it is cooked at home.

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Vetkoek (South African Fried Bread)

Vetkoek is a yeasted dough, flattened by hand and deep-fried until it is crisp outside and soft as bread inside. The Afrikaans name translates literally as fat cake, and the isiZulu and isiXhosa name is amagwinya. It is one of the most widely eaten things in South Africa. Its lineage is Dutch. Fried yeast dough came to the Cape with Dutch settlers, and vetkoek belongs to the same broad family as the Dutch oliebol, the Caribbean johnnycake and Mexican sopaipillas. What happened to it afterwards is what makes it South African: it became township food and street food, sold from stalls and windows across the country, and its usual filling, curried beef mince, is itself a product of the Cape's Indian and Cape Malay influence. It is eaten both ways round. Split and stuffed with curried mince, cheese, polony, tinned fish or slaw, it is lunch. Split and spread with syrup, honey or jam, it is a sweet snack with tea. Neither version is more authentic than the other. Note that this page covers plain vetkoek. The filled version with beef mince curry has a separate page on this site, and the two are meant to complement rather than replace each other.

45 minEasySouth Africa

Recipe by FoodChef · Africook

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Biltong

Biltong is air-dried cured meat from southern Africa, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Namibia, Botswana and Zambia, cut into thick strips, cured in vinegar and spice, and hung to dry for days. It is made from beef and from game including ostrich and kudu. It is not beef jerky, and the difference is real. Jerky is usually cut thin against the grain, marinated in a sweet or soy-based liquid and dried with heat. Biltong is cut thick along the grain, cured with vinegar, salt and coriander, and dried in moving air without heat at all. The flavour and texture that result are quite different, and coriander is the spice that identifies biltong. Two things need saying about method. The first is safety: **this is a raw cured meat that is never cooked.** The 24-hour vinegar and salt cure and the drying are what preserve it, and both need to be done properly. The second is airflow. The meat hangs in a ventilated space with a fan blowing gently, never directly, because a fan pointed at the meat causes case hardening, where the outside seals before the inside has dried. Drying time varies with humidity and temperature, so it is tested by feel: any give means it is still wet inside.

30 minMediumSouth Africa

Recipe by Nympha · Africook

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Malva Pudding

Malva pudding is a spongy baked pudding with apricot jam in the batter, drenched in a hot cream and butter sauce the moment it leaves the oven. It is South African, of Cape Dutch origin, and it is one of the country's best-known desserts. The sauce is the point. A hot pudding absorbs a hot liquid readily, and pouring the cream, butter and sugar mixture over the pudding straight from the oven is what turns a plain sponge into malva pudding. The source is right that it should be moistened rather than swimming, the sauce should soak in, not pool. Three ingredients are doing more than they appear to. Apricot jam gives both moisture and a faint fruit note that is characteristic of the dish. Vinegar provides the acid that bicarbonate of soda needs to react with, since there is no other acid in the batter. And the small quantity of butter is deliberate, malva pudding is not a rich batter, because the richness arrives afterwards in the sauce. The name is unresolved. It is often said to come from the Afrikaans for marshmallow, describing the texture, and sometimes from malvasia wine. Neither is established, and both have been recorded as claims. A chocolate version exists on this site as a separate page.

1 hrEasySouth Africa

Recipe by FoodChef · Africook

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Beetroot Pancakes

Beetroot pancakes are ordinary pancakes with cooked beetroot blended into the batter, which turns them deep pink and adds an earthy sweetness. The beetroot does two things. It colours the batter dramatically, which is most of the appeal and the main reason the recipe exists for children. And it contributes moisture and a mild natural sweetness, so the pancakes need less sugar than a plain batter would. They are made in the ordinary way, blended, rested briefly, cooked on a moderately hot pan, and the technique holds no surprises. Cooking them slightly slower than plain pancakes helps, because the extra moisture from the beetroot means the middle needs a little longer while the outside is already colouring. Served with fresh fruit or berries on top, which is the usual suggestion, they make a breakfast that looks considerably more elaborate than it is. **Filed as Worldwide**, the source describes it as a Continental recipe, and it makes no African claim. The page is kept and reclassified rather than removed.

1 hrEasySouth Africa

Recipe by FoodChef · Africook

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South African Recipes

Vetkoek (South African Fried Bread)

Biltong

Malva Pudding

Beetroot Pancakes

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Classic South African Kota

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