Your Braai Day Recipe Collection — 21 bright braai ideas for cooking on Heritage Day

Ginger chicken potjie, anybody? That’s my personal favourite potjie roast. Yes, a chicken potjie roast, for those of you who’ve never tried my odd little recipe invention. It works, really works. Just pay attention to the details. You literally use the potjie as if it were an oven, and this three-legged wonder works a little magic on that fowl.

Which of these 21 bright braai ideas is your favourite? Tell us in the comments below.

We have other chicken recipes for you too — a chicken flattie, and a second potjie recipe for a fowl, but more conventional this time. There’s a touch of Spain in that one.

And we have chops for you, of course. Lamb recipes below include tips for the perfect braaied tjoppie, rustic rack of lamb on the coals, deboned leg, sticky ribs, whole flank, and a Pinotage and Jerepigo potjie.

The more grown up animal gets a look-in too, with twice-cooked whole mutton rib, and guess what: Durban Curry in a potjie.

There’s Pinotage in a beef recipe too, this time an oxtail Pinotage potjie. And there’s even pork belly, would you believe, in A Crackling Good Quest: The ‘Can you braai pork belly?’ edition. This series has been going almost as long as TGIFood has existed, and yes, you can do it on the braai. I know because I took a chance, experimented and lo and behold, it worked.

There needs to be some fish too, so we have jam-basted fish for you, as well as geelbek with lemon-dill butter. That’s Cape salmon, dressed up for the braai.

Finally, pot bread, or braai bread, is one of my favourite things to do at the braai side, and I have no fewer than five of them for you.

Bringing in the rear is, what else, a potato recipe. This takes us back to my childhood when nobody ever thought of wrapping potatoes in foil. We loved them blackened and oh so soft on the inside, slathered with butter while still hot. No foil-baked potato tastes as good. The recipe for ash-baked potatoes tells you why, and how.

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Have a wonderful weekend, may the Weather Gods shine on you and on all your friends as you entertain them (or they entertain you) in your yard, at the shisa nyama, at the beach or in a park. Be kind, be generous, and have fun celebrating our mutual heritage.

A note about time: these recipes have been published over the past several years, so references to season and weather and so on will not apply.

Here are my 21 recipes to indulge in this National Braai Day… or Week?

Chicken 🐔

Braai-or-bake chicken flattie with lime-garlic butter

Lime and garlic make an interesting flavour combination, one bringing that wonderful depth that garlic brings to any dish, the other affording that delightful zing that citrus lends a dish. Find the recipe here.

Ginger chicken potjie roast

This is the most successful to date of my potjie-roasted chicken recipes. It’s stuffed, golden brown, and it turned out to be madly, joyously succulent. Don’t skimp on the ginger. And here’s how.

Chicken, chorizo & olive potjie

Wine, rosemary and black olives work a little magic when used together in a dish, especially when there are tomatoes involved as well. To add a couple of extra little flavour surprises, I also included a cinnamon stick, some star anise and a couple of bay leaves. Find the recipe here.

Lamb 🐑

The perfect braaied lamb chop

Somewhere between medium and medium rare lies the perfect lamb chop, neither too pink nor too brown in the middle. A few minutes of resting for the meat, and it’s ready to eat. Here’s the recipe.

Rustic rack of lamb on the braai with a rosemary & dried orange zest crust

It’s rustic because the racks are not Frenched. More of a homespun Karoo style, really. No foil bandages here; it’s designed to make the meat sing and zing with the tang of dried orange zest and lovely rosemary herbiness. Here’s how.

Whole lamb flank on the braai

In the Karoo, we like to braai our mutton or lamb rib slowly, side on to the coals. And Roasted garlic, lemon and rosemary enhance a whole lamb rib without masking its intrinsic flavour. Here’s how we do it.

Deboned leg of lamb in a spicy marinade

Try this for a 36-hour marinade for a deboned leg of lamb, deboned all by yourself. Caraway is a spice often overlooked, but it adds an indefinable something to a marinade for lamb along with the more common marriage of cumin, fennel and coriander. All about it can be found here.

Jerepigo & Pinotage Lamb’s neck potjie

I chose two smallish lamb necks for his potjie, to feed four. So I sliced each neck in half down the middle, as if from the head towards the torso. There would be a half neck per person. All of that, and about what I call “a jug of aromatics”, can be found here.

Mutton 🐑

Twice-cooked whole mutton rib

If you start in the morning, you can have this chunky rib of mutton beautifully tender by mid-afternoon. It cooks slowly in the oven first, in a lake of lamb stock, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, lemon juice, garlic and rosemary. Then it rests in its juices until it has cooled to room temperature. Here’s how.

Durban Curry in a potjie

This is a Durban curry recipe for lamb or mutton, but it is cooked slowly in a potjie rather than in a pot on the stove. Making it special is that you toast your own spices first. Find out more here.

Beef 🐄

Beef oxtail Pinotage potjie

All of the elements of a good, rich Boeuf Bourguignon are in this potjie dish. The beef, but rather than the “lean stewing beef” called for by Julia Child and others, we are using beef oxtail. Because that’s what we do down in the deep Karoo, and you can see your city garden turf as your own little Karoo. Get the recipe here.

Pork 🐖

A Crackling Good Quest: The ‘Can you braai pork belly?’ edition

Well? Can you braai a whole pork belly? Yes, you can. You’d think it would turn out tough and inedible, but the trick is to treat it exactly the way we braai lamb flanks in the Karoo: slowly, and side-on. Here’s how to pull it off.

Sticky ribs, twice cooked

Okay, this one applies to pork, lamb or mutton ribs. The method is much the same. Pass the jammer lappie, somebody. Find all the gen here.

Seafood

Jam-basted fish on the braai

This is my interpretation of the way they like their fish on the West Coast, but instead of serving it with jam I used it in a baste. Here’s how I like to do fish on the coals.

Braaied geelbek with dill-lemon butter

Geelbek, also known as Cape salmon, is one of the finest fishes in South African waters and is ideal for butterflying and cooking over the coals. Here are my tips for getting it right, and the recipe.

Add some starch…  🍞 🥔

And finally, we need some starch at the braai, whether potatoes or bread, or both. Here are five pot bread recipes, and what I think is the best way to cook whole potatoes at the braai.

Rosemary and olive braai bread

Olives and rosemary are a natural match and, with the addition of a hint of garlic, make for a delicious loaf of bread cooked in a cast-iron pot surrounded by hot coals. Find the recipe here.

Chimichurri braai bread

Bread made with chimichurri is popular in Argentina where the intensely flavoured sauce itself is served with braaied meat. I took the idea and turned it into a very South African potbrood. This is my favourite. 

Roasted tomato and onion potbread

Here’s another take on a basic pot bread (potbrood), enhanced with oven-roasted tomatoes and caramelised onion. Get the recipe here.

Farmhouse braai bread

As you’ll see when you open this link, I made this bread one slow day during lockdown, as an experiment. It’s all about flavour and texture, thanks to the inclusion of maple syrup, treacle sugar, oats and sesame seeds. Here’s my recipe for it.

Olive braai bread

Here’s another take on a basic pot bread (potbrood), but given a Mediterranean twist with lovely plump black olives. The recipe can be found here.

Ash-baked potatoes

Look ma, no foil. Go back a few decades to the way potatoes used to be cooked in the coals. Right in there, uncovered, for a true taste of the ashy fire in the soft fluffy centres. Get the recipe here, and have a refreshing, restful weekend and week ahead. DM