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Braai recipe of the week

Lamb and apricot sosaties

Cape Malay-style curried lamb skewers with dried apricots and onion: sweet, tangy, sticky and gone in minutes.

Serves 6 (about 12 skewers)

Sosaties are the skewer South Africa grew up on: chunks of lamb soaked overnight in a sweet, gently spiced curry-and-apricot marinade, threaded with onion and dried apricots, then charred over hot coals. Everything here is in a normal supermarket wherever you braai, apart from the chutney if you’re outside Mzansi, and even that has crept onto most big-shop shelves. Do the marinade on Friday night and on match day you just thread, braai and take the credit.

  • Serves 6 (about 12 skewers)
  • Prep 30 minutes, plus overnight marinating in the fridge
  • Cook 10 to 15 minutes (plus 30 to 40 minutes for the coals)

You’ll need

For the sosaties

  • 1.2 kg boneless lamb leg or shoulder, trimmed of thick fat and cut into 3 cm cubes
  • 200 g dried apricots (soft, ready-to-eat)
  • 2 red onions, cut into wedges and separated into 2-layer petals
  • 12 metal skewers, or wooden skewers soaked in water for 30 minutes

For the marinade

  • 1 tbsp vegetable oil
  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 2 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, grated
  • 2 tbsp mild curry powder
  • 1 tsp ground turmeric
  • 1 tsp ground coriander
  • 4 tbsp apricot jam
  • 3 tbsp Mrs Ball’s chutney (or another fruity mango chutney)
  • 100 ml cider vinegar or white wine vinegar
  • 100 ml water
  • 3 bay leaves
  • 1 tsp salt and plenty of black pepper

Method

  1. Make the marinade. Heat the oil in a pan and soften the chopped onion for 5 minutes. Add the garlic, ginger, curry powder, turmeric and coriander and stir for 1 minute until it smells like a Cape Town kitchen. Add the jam, chutney, vinegar, water, bay leaves, salt and pepper, bring to a simmer and cook for 3 minutes. Let it cool completely.
  2. Pour about a quarter of the cooled marinade into a clean jug, cover it and put it in the fridge. That’s your basting and dipping sauce, and raw meat never touches it.
  3. Put the lamb in a bowl or zip bag with the rest of the marinade, mix well, cover and refrigerate overnight (at least 4 hours, up to 24). Never on the worktop.
  4. Light the coals. In cold, windy weather (hello, UK autumn), give a full chimney starter 30 to 40 minutes, until the coals are covered in grey ash with no flames. You want hot coals: you should only manage the hand test for two to three seconds at grid height.
  5. Thread the skewers, alternating lamb, an apricot and a couple of onion petals, and leaving a small gap between pieces so the heat gets in. Throw away the marinade the raw lamb sat in.
  6. Braai over hot coals for 10 to 15 minutes, turning every 2 to 3 minutes, until the lamb is well browned and charred at the edges. Lamb cubes are whole cuts, so a little pink in the centre is fine for most people once the outside is properly browned: aim for about 63°C in the middle for medium. If you’re feeding young children, anyone pregnant, older or unwell, cook them to 75°C with no pink.
  7. While they cook, bring the reserved marinade to the boil in a small pan and bubble it for 2 minutes until glossy. Brush it over the sosaties in the last couple of minutes, then rest them for 3 minutes on a clean plate (not the one the raw skewers were on) and serve with the rest of the sauce on the side.

Food safety, the boring-but-vital bit

Keep the lamb in the fridge while it marinates and until it goes on the coals. Use separate tongs and plates for raw and cooked, and never baste with marinade that’s touched raw meat unless you’ve boiled it first. Get leftovers in the fridge within 2 hours, eat them within 2 days, and reheat only once, until steaming hot. Metal skewers get scorching hot, so warn the guests and keep them away from little hands.

Goes with: Yellow rice with raisins or a big pot of pap, a crunchy salad, a cold Castle or a ginger beer, and a kick-off time early enough to justify it all.

Published 22 October 2026 as part of that week’s Jokes & Braai. Back to all the jokes and recipes. Temperatures follow UK Food Standards Agency guidance.

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