South African cuisine

South African cuisine reflects the diverse range of culinary traditions embodied by the various communities that inhabit the country. Among the indigenous peoples of South Africa, the Khoisan foraged over 300 species of edible food plants, such as the rooibos shrub legume, whose culinary value continues to exert a salient influence on South African cuisine. Subsequent encounters with Bantu pastoralists facilitated the emergence of cultivated crops and domestic cattle, which supplemented traditional Khoisan techniques of meat preservation. In addition, Bantu-speaking communities forged an extensive repertoire of culinary ingredients and dishes, many of which are still consumed today in traditional settlements and urban entrepôts alike.
The San peoples were hunter-gatherers, who mostly depended on foods like tortoises, crayfish, coconuts and squash. Agriculture was introduced to South Africa by the Bantu peoples, who continue in the cultivation of grain, starch fruit and root tubers — in the manner of maize, squash and sweet potatoes, following their introduction in the Columbian exchange, displacing the production of many Old World food crops. Mabele (red sorghum) and madumbe (cocoyam, taro, or arrowroot) also continue to be widely cultivated.
By the 17th century, Dutch and British foodways brought via European immigration resulted in further culinary diffusion. The Cape Malay community founded a distinctive diasporic cuisine, derived largely from Southeast Asian culinary traditions, while Afrikaner voortrekkers further inland adapted Dutch, Khoisan, Cape Malay and Bantu foodways to accommodate their peripatetic lifestyle. In addition, French Huguenot refugees, many of whom settled in Franschhoek, played an instrumental role in developing South Africa's viticultural industry.
During the period of British colonial rule, immigrants from Asia, many of whom arrived as indentured laborers in the 19th century, further enriched the culinary oeuvre of South Africa. In particular, Indian South Africans brought a wealth of spices, seasonings and dishes, historically associated with KwaZulu-Natal, although Indian cuisine is currently widely available across South Africa and consumed by all ethnic groups.
Disinvestments and sanctions imposed on South Africa during apartheid stifled the country's culinary output. At this time shebeens, situated in urban townships, became very popular and often served as non-formal community centers, especially for black South Africans who pursued their cultural and culinary traditions. Following the end of apartheid, South African cuisine witnessed a renaissance, with diverse culinary options available in most of the country's major cities catering to tourists, expatriates and local residents. In addition, South African ingredients and dishes have attained greater visibility worldwide, owing to the burgeoning South African diaspora.
In the precolonial period, indigenous cuisine was characterised by the use of a very wide range of foods including fruits, nuts, bulbs, leaves and other products gathered from wild plants and by the hunting of wild game. The introduction of domestic cattle and grain crops by Bantu speakers who arrived in the southern regions from north-east Africa since 200 AD and the spread of cattle keeping to Khoisan groups enabled products and the availability of fresh meat on demand.
The pre-colonial diet consisted primarily of cooked grains, especially sorghum and millet, fermented milk (somewhat like yogurt) and roasted or stewed meat. At some point, maize replaced sorghum as the primary grain, and there is some dispute as to whether maize, a Central American crop, arrived with European settlers (notably the Portuguese) or spread through Africa before white settlements via Africans returning from the Americas during the era of the slave trade.
People also kept sheep and goats, and communities often organised vast hunts for the abundant game, but the beef was considered the absolutely most important and high-status meat. The ribs of any cattle that were slaughtered in many communities were so prized that they were offered to the chief of the village.
In many ways, the daily food of South African families can be traced to the indigenous foods that their ancestors ate. A typical meal in a Bantu-speaking, South African household is a stiff, fluffy porridge of maize meal (called pap, and very similar to American grits) with a flavorful stewed meat gravy. Traditional rural families (and many urban ones) often ferment their pap for a few days—especially if it is sorghum instead of maize—which gives it a tangy flavour. The Sotho-Tswana call this fermented pap, ting.
Vegetables used are often some sort of pumpkin, varieties of which are indigenous to South Africa, although now many people eat pumpkins that originated in other countries. Rice and beans are also very popular although they are not indigenous. Another common vegetable dish, which arrived in South Africa with its many Irish immigrants, but which has been adopted by South Africans, is shredded cabbage and white potatoes cooked with butter.
For many South Africans meat is the center of any meal. The Khoisan ate roasted meat, and they also dried meat for later use. The influence of their diet is reflected in the common Southern African love of barbecue (generally called in South Africa by its Afrikaans name, a braai) and biltong (dried preserved meat). As in the past, when men kept cattle as their prized possession in the rural areas, South Africans have a preference for beef.
Today, South Africans enjoy not only beef, but mutton, goat, chicken and other meats as a centerpiece of a meal. On weekends, many South African families have a braai, and the meal usually consists of pap en vleis, which is maize meal and grilled meat. Eating meat even has a ritual significance in both traditional and modern South African culture.
In Bantu culture, for weddings, initiations, the arrival of family members after a long trip and other special occasions, families will buy a live animal and slaughter it at home, and then prepare a large meal for the community or neighbourhood. Participants often say that spilling the blood of the animal on the ground pleases the ancestors who invisibly gather around the carcass. On holiday weekends, entrepreneurs will set up pens of live animals along the main roads of townships—mostly sheep and goats—for families to purchase, slaughter, cook and eat. Beef being the most prized meat for weddings, affluent families often purchase a live steer for slaughter at home.
During the pioneering days of the 17th century, new foods such as biltong, droëwors and rusks evolved locally out of necessity.
South Africa was a colony of the British Empire and has strong influences from United Kingdom. As British people settled in South Africa they brought their cuisine, which influenced South African cuisine.
Sunday roast is as popular in South Africa as Australia, Canada and New Zealand where there are influences from the UK. In South Africa, Yorkshire pudding is replaced by gravy sauce and rice.
Fish and chips are also popular in South Africa. Fish and chip shops have dynamic ways to sell such as vendors or vans. Typically fried fish are hakes and snoeks.
A very distinctive regional style of South African cooking is often referred to as "Cape Dutch". This cuisine is characterised mainly by the usage of spices such as nutmeg, allspice and chili peppers. The Cape Dutch cookery style owes at least as much to the cookery of the slaves brought by the Dutch East India Company to the Cape from Bengal, Java and Malaysia as it does to the European styles of cookery imported by settlers from the Netherlands, and this is reflected in the use of eastern spices and the names given to many of these dishes.
The Cape Malay influence has brought spicy curries, sambals, pickled fish, and a variety of fish stews.
Bobotie is a South African dish that has Cape Malay origins. It consists of spiced minced meat baked with an egg-based topping. Of the many dishes common to South Africa, bobotie is perhaps closest to being the national dish, because it is not commonly found in any other country. The recipe originates from the Dutch East India Company colonies in Batavia, with the name derived from the Indonesian bobotok. It is also made with curry powder, leaving it with a slight tang. It is often served with sambal, a hint of its origins from the Malay Archipelago.
South African yellow rice, a sweet dish made with turmeric, raisins, cinnamon and sugar, also has its origins in Cape Malay cookery, and is often referred to as Cape Malay yellow rice.
French Huguenot refugees brought wines as well as their traditional recipes from France.
Curried dishes are popular in South Africa among people of all ethnic origins; many dishes came to the country with the thousands of Indian indentured labourers brought to South Africa in the nineteenth century. South African Indian cuisine has contributed to South African cooking with a wide variety of dishes and culinary practices, including a variety of curries, sweets, chutneys, fried snacks such as samoosas, and other savoury foods.
Bunny chow, a dish from Durban ("the largest 'Indian' city outside of India"), consisting of a hollowed-out loaf of bread filled with curry, has been adapted into mainstream South African cuisine. In the townships surrounding Pretoria, the capital, and Johannesburg, this sandwich is often referred to as a spatlo.
Beer has been an important beverage in South Africa for hundreds of years among indigenous people long before colonisation and the arrival of Europeans with their own beer drinking traditions. Traditional beer was brewed from local grains, especially sorghum. Beer was so prized that it became central to many ceremonies, like betrothals and weddings, in which one family ceremoniously offered beer to the other family.
Unlike European beer, South African traditional beer was unfiltered and cloudy and had a low alcohol content. Around the turn of the 1900s, when white-owned industry began studying malnutrition among urban workers, it was discovered that traditional beer provided crucial vitamins sometimes not available in the grain-heavy traditional diet and even less available in urban industrial slums.
When South Africa's mines were developed and black South Africans began to urbanise, women moved to the city also, and began to brew beer for the predominantly male labour force—a labour force that was mostly either single or who had left their wives back in the rural areas under the migrant labour system. That tradition of urban women making beer for the labour force persists in South Africa to the extent that informal bars and taverns (shebeens) are typically owned by women (shebeen queens).
Today, most urban dwellers buy beer manufactured by industrial breweries that make beer that is like beer one would buy in Europe and America, but rural people and recent immigrants to the city still enjoy the cloudy, unfiltered traditional beer.
Comparable to an American or western European diet, milk and milk products are very prominent in the traditional Black South African diet. As cows were considered extremely desirable domestic animals in precolonial times, milk was abundant. In the absence of refrigeration, various kinds of soured milk, somewhat like yogurt, were a dietary mainstay. A visitor to any African village in the 1800s would have been offered a large calabash of cool fermented milk as a greeting.
Because milk cows allowed women to wean their children early and become fertile more quickly, local cultures had a number of sayings connecting cattle, milk and population growth, such as the Sotho-Tswana saying, "cattle beget children."
Today, in the dairy section of South Africa's supermarkets, one will find a variety of kinds of milk, sour milk, sour cream, and other modern versions of traditional milk products.
South Africa can be said to have a significant "eating out" culture. While there are some restaurants that specialise in traditional South African dishes or modern interpretations thereof, restaurants featuring other cuisines such as Moroccan, Chinese, West African, Congolese, and Japanese can be found in all of the major cities and many of the larger towns. There are also many home-grown chain restaurants, such as Spur and Dulce Café.
There is also a proliferation of fast-food restaurants in South Africa. While some international players such as Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald's are active in the country, they face stiff competition from local chains such as Nando's, Galito's, Steers, Chicken Licken, Barcelos, Fat Cake City and King Pie. Many of the restaurant chains originating from South Africa have also expanded successfully outside the borders of the country. Also, Starbucks is present in the country.
Afrikaans
Tsonga and Venda
Afrikaans
Indian
Malay
Zulu, Xhosa and Sotho
Afrikaans
MIndian
Basemzanzi, B., & Moroka, T. 2004. South African indigenous foods : a collection of recipes of indigenous foods . Pretoria, IndiZAFoods.