Potjiekos

As tradition built it

Serves 6 to 8. 2 to 4 hours depending on the meat.

Ingredients

• 1.5 kg oxtail, beef shin or lamb neck
• 2 tbsp oil
• 2 onions, sliced
• 800 g potato, carrot, sweet potato and butternut, in large pieces
• 400 g mushroom, green bean, baby marrow and peas
• 250 to 500 ml stock, wine or water. No more
• to taste salt, black pepper, bay

Method

1. Fire first. Hardwood only, burned down 30 to 45 minutes to white grey coals. A No. 2 potjie holds 6 to 7 litres and feeds 6 to 8.
2. Brown the meat in the pot with the oil, seasoned with salt, black pepper and bay, and leave it exactly where it is. That is the bottom layer and it does not move again.
3. Layer: onions and the potato, carrot, sweet potato and butternut next, the mushroom, green bean, baby marrow and peas on top. Do not mix them.
4. Add 1 to 2 cups of the stock, wine or water, poured down the side. Not enough to cover. This is the number the dish turns on.
5. Lid on. Chicken 1.5 to 2 hours, lamb or beef 2.5 to 3, oxtail 3 to 4 minimum.
6. Manage by ear every 30 to 45 minutes. Quiet simmer: correct. Silence: add coals. Hard bubbling: take coals away. Tilt the pot occasionally so the liquid reaches all round the base.
7. Never stir. Serve by digging down through the layers so every plate gets all of them.

What a modern chef changes

Wood chosen for the job, a measured liquid, and a finish the tradition arrives at by luck

Rungs 2, 1 and 5

Method

1. Use kameeldoring and a thin coal bed. It drops to coals in about an hour and then holds them like glowing rock, which is what a three hour potjie needs: a thin layer you do not have to feed. Rooikrans burns out too fast for this and sekelbos runs too hot.
2. Measure the liquid at 250 ml and trust it. The instinct to add more is the biggest failure mode and it is why the diaspora version is a casserole. At 250 ml the base braises and everything above it steams, and the finished liquor is almost entirely rendered out of the meat, so it arrives concentrated and needs no reduction.
3. Season at four points: the meat before browning, the root layer, the soft layer, and a correction at the table. In a pot you are forbidden to stir, seasoning each stratum for its own position is the only way any of it gets seasoned at all.
4. Split and rebuild at the pass, if you are plating it. Lift the vegetables out whole, pour off the liquor, settle two minutes, skim the fat, reduce by a third, and whisk the fat back in off the heat. The same glossy, just split sauce a good potjie gives you at hour three, arrived at by choice rather than by hope.