Africa
South African Shish Kebabs (Sosaties)
Travel the world’s barbecue trail and you’ll find meat on a stick almost everywhere. South Africa’s version goes by its Afrikaner name: sosatie. Like all good Cape Malay meat dishes, it contains fruit and curry—the fruit (usually apricots) interspersed with the meat on the skewers; the curry used to flavor the marinade and sauce. Cape Malay refers to the descendants of Javanese and Malaysian slaves and indentured workers brought to Cape Town to work in shipbuilding and farming during the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries.
I’ve made the heavy cream optional. It will give you richer sosaties and sauce, but the cream has an odd way of clotting until you cook it, which you may find disconcerting. Personally, I add the cream, but you’ll get excellent sosaties without it.
South African Shish Kebabs (Sosaties) Recipe
South African Shish Kebabs (Sosaties)
Recipe Notes
- Advance Prep: 2 hours to overnight for marinating the meat
- Yield: Serves 4
- Method: Direct grilling
Ingredients
- 1 pound pork tenderloin, cut into 1-inch cubes
- 1/2 pound lamb shoulder or leg, cut into 1-inch cubes, or 1/2 pound more pork
- 3 to 4 tablespoons dark brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon plus 1/2 teaspoon curry powder
- 2 teaspoons coriander seeds
- 2 teaspoons black peppercorns
- Coarse salt (kosher or sea)
- 2 cups dried apricots
- 1 medium-size onion, thinly sliced, plus 1 onion, peeled
- 4 strips orange zest (each 1/2 by 2 inches) removed with a vegetable peeler
- 1-1/2 cups dry red wine
- 1/2 cup red wine vinegar
- 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
- 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons heavy (whipping) cream (optional, see Note)
- 3 slices of bacon, cut into 1-inch pieces
- 2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) butter
- 2 tablespoons apricot jam, or more to taste
You'll Also Need
- Flat metal or bamboo skewers; an aluminum foil grill shield
Recipe Steps
1: Place the pork and lamb in a large nonreactive bowl or baking dish. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of the brown sugar, the 1 tablespoon of curry powder, and the coriander seeds, peppercorns, and 1-1/2 teaspoons of salt over the meat and stir to coat. Add the apricots, the sliced onion, and the orange zest, red wine, wine vinegar, and olive oil and stir to mix. Stir in the 1/2 cup of cream, if using. Let the meat marinate in the refrigerator, covered, for 2 to 4 hours, turning it several times so it marinates evenly. The longer the meat marinates, the richer the flavor will be (for an even stronger wine flavor, marinate the meat overnight).
2: Meanwhile, cut the peeled onion in half crosswise, then cut each half in quarters. Break the quarters into layers.
3: Drain the marinated meat in a large, fine meshed strainer over a large saucepan. Remove the meat and apricots from the strainer and discard the remaining solids. Set the marinade aside. Thread the meat, apricots, onion layers, and pieces of bacon onto the skewers, alternating the ingredients and beginning and ending with a cube of meat. Refrigerate the kebabs, covered, until ready to cook.
4: Place the saucepan with the marinade over high heat, let the marinade come to a boil, and boil until thick and reduced by about one-third, 5 to 8 minutes. Whisk in the butter, apricot jam, 1 tablespoon of brown sugar, and the remaining 1/2 teaspoon of curry powder. If you used heavy cream in the marinade, add the remaining 2 tablespoons of cream to the sauce. Let the sauce continue to boil, whisking it until thick and richly flavored, 2 to 4 minutes longer. Taste for seasoning, adding up to 1 tablespoon more brown sugar and more apricot jam and/or salt as necessary; the sauce should be a little sweet. Pour one-quarter of the sauce into a small bowl for basting.
5: Set up the grill for direct grilling and preheat it to high.
6: When ready to cook, brush and oil the grill grate. Place the kebabs on the hot grate and grill until browned on the outside and the meat is cooked through, about 2 minutes per side, about 8 minutes in all. (If you are using bamboo skewers, you may want to slide an aluminum foil shield under the exposed ends to keep them from burning.) Use the pinch test to check for doneness. After 4 minutes, start basting the sosaties with the sauce set aside for that purpose.
7: Serve the sosaties at once. Unskewer the kebabs onto plates and spoon some of the remaining sauce on top, serving the rest in a bowl on the side.
Recipe Tips
NOTE: In the old days, Afrikaners would add sour milk or heavy cream to the marinade for extra richness. Most younger grill masters omit it. I’ve made the cream optional, but I like the richness it adds.
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