Uploads from Nigel Lewis

Currently Playing: I Thought I Knew BBQ. Then I Met This South African.

Forty years a butcher and I'd never cooked a braai. So I handed my garden over to a South African braai master, did the butchery, and let him take over the fire. After the Argentines showed me how they cook a whole lamb, a lot of you said I had to do a braai next. So I invited Roger over. He's cooked over wood every weekend of his life, his wife's father was a sheep farmer in the Eastern Cape, and he brought three kinds of wood, a jar of braai salt and a lot of opinions. It starts in the shop. I break down a shoulder of lamb on the bone for the potjie (the three-legged cast iron pot South Africans cook in for hours), then cut loin chops from a 22 kilo Devon lamb, slice inch-thick rump from a three-week hung rump and show you the butcher's cut hiding inside it. I cube a shoulder of pork for sosaties, spatchcock a chicken, and make boerewors from scratch: lean blade steak, pork back fat, nutmeg, coriander, garlic, salt and pepper. No water. A recipe passed down to my father and then to me, and one I've been selling to South Africans for years without ever cooking it their way. Then the fire. Roger lights it with pine cones, burns camel thorn and olive wood, cooks mielies (corn on the cob) in their husks straight on the coals, and shows me why South Africans pre-cook their chicken before it ever touches the grill. Peri-peri marinade, a potato and butternut bake, pap and sauce, and the potjie coming off after four and a half hours with the lamb falling off the bone. He also gave me his honest verdict on my boerewors. It wasn't a perfect score. What's on the braai Boerewors, lamb loin chops, rump steak, pork sosaties, spatchcock chicken (or "flatties" as Roger calls them), potjie of lamb shoulder, mielies, potato and butternut bake, pap and sauce. Roger's marinades Sosaties: soy sauce, honey, garlic, lemon juice, smoked paprika. Peri-peri chicken: African bird's eye chilli, lemon, vinegar, paprika, garlic, salt, pepper. Oven at 180°C fan for 45 minutes, then finish over the wood. The wine A Kanonkop Pinotage and a Stellenbosch Bordeaux blend. Roger will tell you South Africa isn't New World at all; they've been making wine there for 400 years. Tell your friends. Online Shop 👉 https://lewismeat.com/