COPPERSeswaa recipe
Botswana's national dish: tough bone-in beef boiled in salted water for hours, then pounded with a wooden pestle until it collapses into fibrous threads.
Ingredients
- 1500 g bone-in beef chuck
- 1500 ml water
- 2 tsp salt
How to make Seswaa
- Cut 1.5 kg of bone-in beef chuck, shank or neck into large fist-sized pieces. Tough cuts with bone are the point; do not use a lean roasting joint.
- Put the meat in a heavy pot, cover with about 1.5 litres of water and add 2 teaspoons of salt. That is the entire seasoning: no onion, no garlic, no stock cube, no bay leaf.
- Bring to a boil, skim the foam, then cover and simmer gently for 3 hours, topping up with hot water only if the pot threatens to go dry.
- The meat is ready when it falls off the bone under a fork. Lift out the bones and any gristle.
- Leave 2 to 3 cm of cooking liquid in the pot and pound the meat directly in it with a clean wooden pestle, 10 to 15 minutes, until it breaks into fine fibres rather than chunks.
- Keep pounding and turning until the texture is uniform and slightly moist. Taste and add salt only if needed.
- Cook uncovered a few more minutes if it is watery; seswaa should hold its shape on the spoon.
- Serve hot with pap, samp or sorghum bogobe.
What is Seswaa?
Seswaa is a traditional dish from Botswana, simmered in one pot, and takes about 3 hours and 30 minutes from start to finish. It is built around bone-in beef chuck. The recipe below uses 3 ingredients and is written out step by step.
How long does Seswaa take?
At 210 minutes it is slower than 73% of the 586 dishes in Copper's atlas. The method runs to 8 steps, the longest being 15 minutes.
Any tips for making Seswaa?
Season with salt only and pound the cooked beef in a little of its cooking liquid until it breaks into fine fibres rather than chunks.
How Seswaa compares
Bone-in beef chuck appears in no other dish in the atlas.
Copper documents Botswana alongside 197 other countries. Every recipe is free to read, with the full ingredient list and every step.