Braai, Bobotie and Biltong: South African Food for Families

South Africa eats outdoors, over a fire, and calls it a braai. It is a barbecue, it is a religion, and it is the meal a family will have at least four times in two weeks.

A braai is boerewors, the coiled beef sausage, lamb chops, chicken, and sometimes a whole fish, cooked over wood coals, with pap, the maize porridge, and chakalaka, a spiced vegetable relish. Every guesthouse has a braai area and every lodge does one under the stars. The kids eat the boerewors in a roll, which is called a boerie roll and is the South African hot dog.

Biltong is the road trip. Air dried beef or game, spiced, sliced, sold in bags at every petrol station and farm stall. It is jerky’s older, better cousin, and children eat it by the fistful in the back of the car on the Garden Route. Droewors is the dried sausage version.

The Cape and the sweets

Bobotie is the Cape Malay dish, spiced minced meat baked with an egg custard on top, served with yellow rice and chutney. Mild, sweet, and every child eats it. Cape Malay curries in the Bo Kaap, the painted neighborhood in Cape Town, with a cooking class that kids can do.

Fish and chips at Kalk Bay harbor, snoek on the braai on the west coast, Durban’s bunny chow, a curry served in a hollowed loaf, if you go that far.

Malva pudding is the dessert, a sticky apricot sponge with cream. Koeksisters are twisted doughnuts in syrup. Milk tart. Rooibos tea, which is caffeine free and the kids can drink it with milk and honey. And the Winelands lunch, at a farm with a lawn and a playground, where the adults have a glass and the children have the grass.

Planning South Africa with kids? Start with the full South Africa family travel guide, or send me the ages and the dates and I will come back with what is really available.