Heritage Month might be over but the food of it remains on everyone’s lips. In the streets, meat is churning and casings are stacked with Deon de Sousa’s award-winning boerewors.
Every year, Checkers launches a special mince and wors from their annual Championship Boerewors competition. The live event includes professional chefs and braai masters who assist the hopefuls to cook it perfectly and present it to judges. This year’s panel included content creator Nick Hammond, professional chef Nti Ramaboa, Springbok alumnus Courtnall Skosan among others.
De Sousa took the trophy for the competition’s 34th anniversary, a feat earned thanks to watching his master butcher father enter the competition in his younger years.
“You’d be sitting outside Checkers at six years old with a cold truck playing music and there’s the Oros man giving you juice or chips or sweets. Of course, you’d be tasting all the boerewors,” he said.
Far from a helicopter parent, De Sousa said his dad’s wisdom was imparted supportively. With 40 years of experience, De Sousa was raised for the big win even though he is a numbers guy with a nine-to-five as an investment portfolio manager.
After studying actuarial science and working in the space for two years, he moved on to investment, where his day involves market research, handling clients’ financials and making sure they have the right mix of assets and securities.
“Internally our guys joked about how it’s not too far from how you have to arrive at the perfect boerewors. You have to get the right mix of meats and blend of spices to get the optimum product. It’s making sure you get the numbers right. The ratio and what 10% fat vs 20% fat will do. It all helped.”
What has also struck a chord with De Sousa is how the competition makes celebrities out of its winners. He doesn’t only have bragging rights in his personal and professional circles but recognition from those who knew little about Championship Boerwewors. Ultimately it’s all been about heritage and how South Africans view the culture of a braai and the must-have wors that goes with it.
Italy has pizza and Japan has sushi, and De Sousa sees wors as truly authentic to Mzansi. Two factors come to mind for him, and one of them lies in the taste.
“If you’ve had a beef banger or a pork sausage, they’re very tightly packed in certain instances. You can’t quite taste the texture of the meat or the juiciness of the fat,” he said. “You get that salt, pepper and coriander blend, with coriander one of the key spices.”
The second important factor for De Sousa is how we make it worth every bite. Not many places in the world see it as a staple, and it has been key to bringing people together at celebrations and weekend gatherings.
TimesLIVE
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