Jan Braai - Braaibroodjies and burgers

T his book is dedicated to the millions of South Africans who celebrate National Braai Day on 24 September every year.

In National Braai Day, we South Africans have a realistic opportunity to entrench and cement a national day of celebration for our country, within our lifetimes. I believe that having a national day of celebration can play a significant role in nation-building and social cohesion as the observance of our shared heritage can truly bind us together.

In Africa, a fire is the traditional place of gathering. I urge you to get together with your friends and family around a fire on 24 September every year to celebrate our heritage, share stories and pass on traditions. Please help me spread that word!

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

F un is the single word that describes this book best. A braaibroodjie is your chance in life to have the bread buttered on both sides, literally. And packing that bread with delicious fillings before toasting it over the coals of a wooden fire is just the way to celebrate life, considering you only live once. On that note, you might as well then go full throttle with this one life because the book you are holding not only has a selection of real masterpiece braaibroodjies, but also an arsenal of burgers that epitomise the concept of hitting the ball out of the park when cooking great food on a fire.

Fundamentally, braaibroodjies and burgers are fun items at the fire. These are straightforward ingredients that you can find in any supermarket; quick to prepare, meaning that you can start by lighting the fire and easily do all the other work by the time your coals are ready; and easy to braai (its not a thick cut of meat that needs you to do aerial acrobatics above the fire for hours before its cooked on the inside without the outsides burning, nor is it a tough cut of meat that need to become tender in a potjie before the rest of the ingredients and the world turns into soup). With braaibroodjies, the actual braai part only has one trick: turn as often as possible. With burger patties, the trick is the exact opposite: only turn once. These techniques are discussed in detail in all relevant recipes, so I am convinced you will not struggle.

As all the wonderful photos in this book attest to, braaibroodjies and burgers are pleasing to the eye and very photogenic. Braaibroodjies and burgers are also easy to eat. They make for straightforward guest and table management as they are consumed in total, with no leftover skin, bones or shells. More often than not, cutlery isnt even necessary, and after the feast, there are just empty plates.

Creating this book was a whole lot of fun and I hope and trust that you will find the same amount of joy using it. Using the book to page through should be fun, preparing the recipes in this book should be fun, and eating the braaibroodjies and burgers you make from this book really should be fun.

Publishing a book solely dedicated to these two fun stars of the braai fire has been a long-term goal of mine and I am delighted to finally present you with the finished product. The advantage of taking so many years to reach this point is that by now, I am surrounded by a very strong support team in a project like this, without whom the work of art in your hands would simply not be such a wonderful work of art.

At the time of first publishing this book, the year 2020, social media is the way in which all of us humans communicate and stay in touch. When youre having as much fun using this book as we had creating it, please share that fun with me. On all major social media platforms, I can be found on @janbraai and lets all use the hashtag #braaibroodjiesandburgers when talking about the fun were having! I look forward to sitting at my braai fire and seeing photos of your braaibroodjies and burgers at your braai fire. Thank you for the support in buying this book and please continue helping me to spread the message of uniting this nation around a fire!

Most importantly, have fun.

Jan Braai

The best bread for a braaibroodjie

T he braaibroodjie is not simply the best thing since sliced bread its better than sliced bread and coincidentally, a consequence of sliced bread. There are rare exceptions for some of the more exotic variations of braaibroodjie in this book but a braaibroodjie is almost exclusively best made by using plain, straightforward white sliced bread.

When I was a kid, these breads were sold as a single unit and either in the bakery area of the supermarket or close to the payment points, the store would have a machine for you to slice your own bread. These machines sliced the whole loaf in uniform slices and the slices were also typically thinner than if you sliced that same bread with a bread knife at home.

Nowadays, most supermarkets sell a few commercial brands of white sliced bread. And that is what I almost always buy to make braaibroodjies. I say almost always because sometimes that is not available in a supermarket and on those rare occasions, not by choice but by force, I buy something else.

My knowledge of sliced white bread does not extend to having any idea why some commercial bread suppliers make an oversized version but frankly, there is no justification for that, nor any place for it in the making of braaibroodjies. These oversized slices do not hold up when building the braaibroodjies, nor when moving the braaibroodjies from your chopping board or similar vehicle of preparation to the braai grid. Due to their non-perfect outline, they also do not pack as neatly into a braai grid and thus, should be avoided.

Commercial bread suppliers also sell to supermarkets a sliced bread similar in shape and size to the real plain, straightforward white sliced bread only its not entirely white and its polluted with bits of bran. Very optimistically, they call this brown bread, which it certainly is not. More accurately, its off-white with speckles. I frankly find it disgusting. I can only hazard a guess that this is a misguided attempt to make it more healthy but theres a look, flavour and texture that I find unappetising, to put it more mildly.

I am no dietician and there is no medical basis for anything I say, but I do believe that if sacrificing braaibroodjies made with perfectly beautiful white sliced bread for this so-called brown bread version is your last hope at getting enough roughage into your digestive system, then you are beyond salvation anyway. Eat your fruit and vegetables in their natural state like you should, and enjoy your braaibroodjies properly made with sliced white bread.