the spice is right: Southern African potjiekos

This dish (pronounced poy-key-kose) is another variation of slow cooked stew, the fruits, nuts and spices adding a bit more flavour than what you may find in the West.

It is named after the three-legged iron potjie pot, originating in South Africa, but popular today in most of the southern countries. The pot retains a lot of heat, ideal for low maintenance cooking over a number of hours.

Every restaurant and home has their own recipe, most of them today using prepackaged spice mixes for this dish. You could do it with any type of curry spice, but when creating it for a restaurant in Namibia, the chef and I made this house recipe from scratch.

The combination of thyme and apple sweetens the meat and goes great with the flavour of chili and turmeric. For the photos, I quickly made this on the stove with boneless springbok meat, but we would normally use chopped pieces of game, the lower leg perfect, as the meat falls off the bone, and the bone marrow thickens the sauce. If you don’t like bone in your stew, you can use flour or cornstarch to thicken the sauce instead. And remember, the longer you let the meat cook, the softer it gets, and the more time the spices have to saturate the meat with flavour.

Southern African potjiekos

oil, sliced onions, chopped garlic, chunks of tough meat (not sirloin or fillet), tomato paste, cumin powder or seeds, turmeric powder, paprika, chili powder, cinnamon, cloves, ground black pepper, bay leaves, salt, coriander powder, thyme, hot water, raisins, cashews, sliced apple, potato chunks, carrot chunks, flour or corn starch to thicken sauce

– heat oil, add onions, garlic and spices
– once transparent, add meat, stir until all sides are coloured
– cover meat with hot water, leave covered to boil and tenderize meat
– add potatoes and carrots once meat is tender
– if sauce needs to be thickened, mix some flour or corn starch with water and add
– once vegetables are cooked, add raisins, cashews and apple for a few minutes, and enjoy with rice!