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Today we're going to be making a dish that is really close to my heart as I'm sure many of you are aware I grew Up in South Africa, and this is a real traditional South African dish today We're gonna be making Potjiekos. This here is the star of the show. It is a cast-iron pot and you'll find at least one of these in most South Africans or Zimbabweans houses Worldwide. This is one that I've had for more than 10 years now and it is still absolutely perfect and it will last many lifetimes it is a fantastic buy it might be a little expensive when you buy it upfront but It's just gonna last forever if you take care of it And I will show a video in the future on how to take care of this if that's something that interests you Just let me know in the comments now traditionally. You would want to cook this on coal You don't wanna use gas, but I am cheating a little bit today I don't have a pit somewhere to actually do the coal.
Today's potjie will be a lamb potjie So I've got a leg of lamb that I've cut up into bite-sized pieces and I've got the bone in there as well That's gonna add fantastic flavor to this. Essentially. What a potjie is is a layered stew so That's a bit sacrilegious to call it the stew. It's not as chew in the traditional sense It's just so much better, but it is a layered stew and I'll show you what that means in just a little while but the meat you've got So many choices if you want to use beef you can you want to use lamb I enjoy a good lamp potjie You can use fish chicken's a big one as well My brother-in-law Andre does fantastic chicken potjie, and I'll get him to show you guys His recipe one day as well because that is awesome When it comes to vegetables, you can use absolutely anything you like when I'm doing a red meat potjie So with lamb or beef I always will add at least a kilogram and a half of fresh tomatoes I will add two or three white onions and That's pretty much it the rest of it could change depending on what's available at the store or fresh from our garden My dad whenever he used to make a potjie he'd put so much cabbage on that He'd have to put a brick on top of the pot because the cabbage was just so high up now I won't be using that much cabbage, but there will be a layer of cabbage in there as well now Let's look at the real secret of a good potjie and that is down to the spices These are the ingredients for my garam masala now ideally, I'd prefer to have whole pieces of things like the cinnamon that's over here and the cloves but Unfortunately, I just didn't have any in stock right now I only have the powdered This garam masala is actually great in many other meals if you just want to make yourself a curried lamb There's a fantastic way to do it.
I would probably add a bit more garlic and some ginger as well When you're doing the cooking up. Yeah, this is a great base for that You just want to grind it up as fine as you can And we'll be ready to start cooking the meat You want to add about a tablespoon of oil just vegetable oil or any oil you want to use some lard would be good. Make sure it's as hot as you can see it there where it's sizzling and then we start adding our meat And then in there the spices now you can mix the spices in with the meat before you add them to the pot, but it's not gonna make a hell of a difference And this is gonna be about the only time you will be allowed to stir your potjie so let's just get it all mixed in there get the spices all over the meat That smells incredible So you see the The bones I left there.
It's quite a bit of meat still on them, but that'll cook off nicely and some more bone over there While this is cooking down a little bit. You're gonna stick your lid back on and You're gonna let it cook for about ten minutes and during that time. You want to prepare your vegetables Once about ten or fifteen minutes have gone by then You should have quite a bit of juice at the bottom of your pot. I Don't know if you can really see that it is Quite juicy in the bottom. So that's fantastic. You want to just spread it out and Now we're gonna start layering Our extra ingredients. So the first thing to go in we're gonna add in our tomatoes As well as our onions and you don't wanna stir it you just want to Just mix it in to the top there We're gonna add About a pint or half a litre of lamb stock At this point you can season to taste you probably only gonna need a bit of salt Because there's quite a bit of pepper in the masala that I mixed up earlier.
So season with a bit of salt be sparing because the obviously is gonna be some salt inside the Lamb stock that I just added You then want to start adding ingredients based on how long they take to cook Generally, it's not terribly important, but I tend to go with the potatoes at the bottom first So just get those spread out and then go with some carrots Then we have our sweet potato this is already getting very full There's our squash Who is going to be layering up some cabbage on the top a couple of things that the cabbage does is Obviously it's there for some nice lovely cabbage to eat But it also it'll hold the moisture in a little bit it creates a bit of a Layer, but a boundary at the top There's one of the ingredients that I haven't actually showed you just yet and before I finished putting the cabbage on I probably should put it and That is some wine now if you don't like cooking with alcohol I know my sister doesn't like alcohol in her food then you can use just water But if you are going to be using water not wine then add about three tablespoons of balsamic vinegar So I'm going to be adding about two cups of wine And then we're just going to continue layering the cabbage I laugh because this is something we used to tease my dad about every time And it looks like I'm gonna have to do the same thing Let me go get a brick.
My dad's gonna be really proud this time Well, there we go, that's a proper Family recipe their bricks and all but what we're gonna do now is you can see that the it's bubbled up already It's already simmering again. So it's time to turn the heat down a bit and let this cook for about three four hours if you can The potjie has been cooking now for about an hour and a half and it's time to check just to see that there's still a Lot of liquid and there definitely is I could actually hear bubbling before so that's another way to check But you can see there's plenty of liquid around there I'm happy with that if however you couldn't hear it bubbling away. Then I would go and add some water or in my case I'd probably add another cup of wine in there.
You can add water that's not problem at all You just want to make sure that there is always liquid inside you because if there isn't Then it could potentially burn down the bottom there. So just make sure there's a liquid in there all the time Now, why do we not stir a potjie? Well as a few reasons for it the way I like to think of it is each layer here that the liquid that's coming up from the bottom all the flavors from the meat is gonna push up through all the different layers It comes up to the top and then it sort of sinks down and it's kind of circulating the whole time that this is cooking And it yes, it's going to bring some of the flavors up from each of the different layers into the other layers But it's not like a stew which pretty much makes everything taste The same in my opinion this just it comes out so different Potjiekos is more than just a meal It's a social event in South Africa.
You'd spend your entire day around cooking one of these and You'd start at 9 a.m Chopping up the vegetables and the meat and getting it all seasoned Probably start cooking at about 11 a.m. With a view to have it done by about 6:00 or 7:00 p.m that evening all through the day you're their friends and family coming around and sharing a beer with you and Sharing the events of the week You'd have a braai probably in the early afternoon like 2 p.m. That's a BBQ for those that don't know what a braai is and It's just such a great day. And it's a tradition. I like to keep alive I've been in the UK now for 20 years and I still have Regular potjies. I really do enjoy it it tastes great but it's also it's that that nostalgia for me as well and my wife really enjoys it she's British and She loves it Her family love it in fact Our next-door neighbour's also British and they came around last year for a potjie and they absolutely loved it and they were asking me yesterday When I'm gonna be doing another potjie so that's part of the reason why I'm doing it today to show you guys how it's done and also To help out my neighbors who have been craving some some good old-fashioned potjie so we're just gonna let this simmer for a little bit longer probably got about another hour and a half to go and We'll have some delicious food ready to eat We are ready now to dish up this is for my next-door neighbor So I'm gonna dish theirs up first and you get to see what this looks like It's been about four and a half hours Now that I've been cooking this every now and then I've come and checked on it made sure that there was some liquid in there and we can see how that's Really come down quite a bit.
I can see there's still some liquid on the side So that is perfect. If you let this dry out they could very easily burn underneath and that's the last thing you want so it's time to turn this off and Let's get some food into a bowl for next door because I'm sure they're quite hungry we're going to get some cabbage in there, of course and This looks and smells incredible So I'm trying to get a little bit of everything in here, of course we'll get some meat from the bottom there All that meat is looking fantastic falling apart nice and juicy just perfect Well, I wish I could offer you all a bowl of this 'cause I'm sure you'd love it So that looks a bit of a mess at the moment But when I take that over to next door And I'm sure they're gonna love that and then it's time for my wife and I to have our dinner as well Anyway, I really do hope you give this a try There are so many different variations of how you can put this together And I'll share a couple more recipes in the future with different types of potjies that I'm sure you guys will love Anyway, that's it for now.
Thank you so much for watching until the next video. Stay safe and stay spicy.
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