Next: 24 Sept 2027
Heritage Day and braai
South Africa's heritage day, known as National Braai Day, with Cape Malay curries, boerewors with coriander and bobotie.
Spices for Heritage Day and braai
On 24 September South Africans celebrate their cultures by cooking outdoors. Boerewors, the farmer's sausage, is spiced with coriander, clove, nutmeg and allspice; bobotie, a baked spiced mince with an egg custard, uses curry powder, turmeric and dried fruit and comes from the Cape Malay community, whose ancestors were brought from the East Indies. Peri-peri chilli sauce, from Portuguese Mozambique, and the Durban curry, from the Indian community, round out the spice map of the country.
The spices
Written by the EveryMasala desk with AI assistance. Background: "Heritage Day (South Africa)" on Wikipedia. Customs differ from place to place and family to family. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Clove: Bayu Nugroho, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Piri piri: Bovineone at English Wikipedia, Public domain, source
- Turmeric: J.M.Garg, CC BY 3.0, source
- Coriander: Thamizhpparithi Maari, CC BY-SA 3.0, source