Recipes / Meat
Frikkadels (heritage recipe)
Old Cape frikkadels of lamb mince, milk-soaked bread and nutmeg, shaped into flat patties and cooked on the braai, adapted from an 1891 Cape cookbook.
- Prep
- 25 min
- On the fire
- 12 min
- Plan ahead
- 30 minutes chilling
- Serves
- 6 (about 18 frikkadels)
- Done at
- 160°F (71°C)
Ingredients
Frikkadels
Mushroom butter, optional
Method
Cooking on gas?
- Preheat with the burners on high and the lid closed for 10 minutes, then turn them down to medium so the lid thermometer settles at 175 to 200°C (350 to 400°F). Brush the grates clean and oil them.
- Cook with the lid open and use the recipe times as a guide.
- Keep one burner off or on low as a cooler zone. If fat flares up, move the food there. Never use water on a gas grill flare-up.
- For a smoky taste, put a handful of wood chips in a smoker box, or a foil parcel pierced with a few holes, over a lit burner while the grill preheats.
On a skottel?
- Brown the frikkadels in a little oil in the centre of the skottel on a medium flame for 5 to 6 minutes a side.
- Cook the onions and mushrooms on the slope at the same time, then spoon them over at the end.
- Tear the bread into a large bowl, pour over the milk and leave it for 5 minutes.
- Squeeze out the extra milk and pour it away. Mash the bread with a fork.
- Add the mince, grated onion, tomato sauce, eggs, nutmeg, pepper and salt. Mix with your hands until it just holds together.
- Fry a teaspoon of the mixture in a pan and taste it. Add more salt or nutmeg if it needs it.
- With wet hands, shape the mixture into 18 balls, then press each into a patty about 2 cm (3/4 inch) thick.
- Lay them on a tray, cover and chill for 30 minutes so they hold their shape on the grid.
- Brush the patties and a hinged grid with oil. Close the grid gently so it holds the frikkadels without squashing them.
- Cook over medium coals for 5 to 6 minutes a side, turning the grid once. Move it to the cooler side if fat drips and flares.
- For the mushroom butter, set a pan on the grid while the frikkadels cook. Fry the sliced onion in the butter for 5 minutes, add the mushrooms and cook for 5 minutes more.
- Rest the frikkadels for 2 minutes and serve with the mushrooms spooned over.
Done when: the frikkadels are browned on both sides, firm when pressed, and a thermometer in the middle of the thickest one reads 71°C (160°F).
Tips
- No hinged grid? Cook them in a skottel or heavy pan on the grid with a thin layer of oil, 5 to 6 minutes a side. Balls work well this way too.
- Chilling matters. Warm frikkadels are soft and break when you turn them.
- Duckitt also stewed hers in curry sauce. Leftovers warmed in a pan of curry gravy make a good next-day meal.
Frikkadels came to the Cape with Dutch settlers and have been made in South African homes for more than 300 years. Hildagonda Duckitt’s 1891 recipe uses raw mutton mince, milk-soaked bread, nutmeg and a little tomato sauce, rolled into balls and fried, and her Cape version is finished with mushrooms and butter. This one keeps her mixture but presses it into patties for the grid. Use a two-zone fire so you can pull them away from flare-ups.
Source
Adapted from Hilda's "Where is it?" of Recipes by Hildagonda J. Duckitt (1891), public domain.