Cuisine:South African

Category:Traditional South African

Cooking Time:2½ hours

Serves:6

Cabbage bredie,  prepared with mutton OR lamb and cabbage is one of those dishes, which would feel insulted if one had to refer to it by the name of its European rival known as “stew”. The principle is the same, but bredies tend to be richer, more tasty and infinitely more filling and varied.

• 1 kg stewing mutton OR lamb
• 25 ml butter OR lard OR oil
• 1 large onion, sliced
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• 10 ml salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• stock OR water
• 500 g potatoes, sliced
• 1 head cabbage, shredded
• 250 ml chopped celery
• 5 ml dill
• freshly grated nutmeg

Heat butter in a large saucepan and sauté onions and garlic until transparent. Add meat and brown quickly. Add salt, pepper and a little stock and simmer, covered, until meat starts to get tender. Add potatoes, cabbage, celery, dill and simmer for 1 hour longer. Add freshly grated nutmeg to taste and serve with rice.

• To concentrate flavours use mutton with a fair amount of fat and bone, 2 cm cubed mutton rib is the best meat to use.
• Never boil meat in stock or water, this tends to dry out and toughen the meat.
• Don’t add liquid. The juices from the vegetables will make a thick gravy.
• Keep the cooking temperature constant, use a medium heat setting, allowing the bredie to simmer gently for a few hours to allow flavours to combine.
• The flavour will improve if the bredie is made a day or two in advance.