No South African recipe site would be worth anything if it did not include a recipe for traditional bobotie. The name of this site comes from the often mis-pronounced name of this very dish. The recipe itself comes from a dear old friend of the family, I hope you will enjoy it.
Ingredients
Filling
- 500g minced beef
- 2 slices white bread (stale with no crusts)
- 2 eggs
- 2 tablespoons hot water
- 2 tablespoons cooking oil
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 1 onion (finely chopped)
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 2 teaspoons curry powder
- 1 teaspoon garlic (crushed)
- half teaspoon ground cloves
- 1 cup raisins
- 1 tablespoon apricot jam
- 1 teaspoon turmeric
- half teaspoon salt
Topping
- half cup milk
- 1 egg (beaten)
- few lemon/bay leaves (for garnishing)
Method
Filling
Preheat oven to 325F. Soak bread in water for 10 minutes, squeeze out excess water and then crumble. In a frying pan heat the oil and brown the onion and garlic. Beat eggs lightly and mix into mince. Add onion mixture, hot water, lemon juice, crumbled bread, turmeric, raisins, jam and sugar to the mince mixing well. Spoon mixture into well greased oven dish and bake for 40 minutes or until golden brown.
Topping
Add egg to milk and beat well. Pour mixture over bobotie and arrange garnish. Return dish to oven and bake for a further 10 minutes or until topping has set. Serve the bobotie with yellow rice and a nice salad of your choice.
Happy eating!
I have just made this dish for myself and I was suitably impressed. I changed the recipe slightly to suit my own tastes. I left out the garlic as well as the cloves. I also only used 1 teaspoon of curry powder as I only had extra strong curry powder. I could not find bay leaves or lemon leaves so I settled for parsley. The bobotie was delicious.
As I manage to find time to make the recipes published here I will publish photos of the real thing along with the recipe.
it’s my first time to see African food…I had no idea what African food looks like and I must say they look delicious…
i would like to try this dish but what can i use to replace apricot jam? i think it will be hard to find it here…
Great Post, what do your reader think about jamie oliver? There are some very good jamie oliver inspited recipes mydish. I have also sent this post to my twitter profile.
This looks wonderful and I will definitely make your version of this classic South African dish, which I have Stumbled. Thanks for sharing it with us. BTW I’ve always thought lamb mince would also work very well for bobotie, but I’ve never seen it made that way. Have you?
Barbara, I have actually made it with lamb cubes (not even mince) and it worked well. The nice thing about lamb is that you can make the curry a bit stronger should you prefer.
I have subscribed to your feed and will be around soon. Thanks for the stumble.
What an excellent site you have! If you won’t mind I’d love to guide Foodista readers to this post.Just add the foodista widget to the end of this post and it’s all set, Thanks!