🇧🇼 The cattle breeds of Botswana

Cattle matter to Botswana mainly through the plate. Beef is the country's favourite meat, raised there in quantity and pounded into seswaa for weddings and funerals, while milk is soured into madila to eat alone or with porridge. Cow offal and dried strips of meat complete the picture.

• Beef is Botswana's favourite meat, with goat second.
• Seswaa, salted pounded beef, is made by men for weddings and funerals.
• Milk is soured into madila, eaten alone or stirred into porridge.
• Serobe simmers cow, goat or sheep offal until soft.
• Meat kept in dried strips is called digwapa.

Cattle in Botswana

Cattle in Botswana are known chiefly by what they give to the table. The country raises a large amount of good beef, and beef stands first among its meats, ahead of goat. Its cooking belongs to the wider food of Southern Africa, and meat sits at the centre of it. The whole beast is used: flesh pounded for feast days, offal simmered soft, strips dried for keeping. Milk is turned at home into madila, a sour milk eaten on its own or stirred into porridge. Goats, sheep and free-range poultry are kept as well, yet beef remains the meat Batswana favour most.

Milk, butter and beef

Beef leads the kitchen, with goat meat close behind. The dish of feast days, seswaa, is beef or goat pounded with salt after long simmering. Serobe is offal, including a cow's intestines, washed well, cut small and cooked soft. Meat is kept by cutting it into strip-like lengths and drying it; such dried meat is called digwapa. Milk goes into madila, a sour milk eaten plain or added to porridge, and it also pairs with the sour sorghum porridge ting, taken with milk and sugar. Sour milk likewise enriches tophi, the Kalanga melon dish.

Festivals, fairs and faith

Beef anchors the big days. Weddings and funerals both call for seswaa, the salted pounded meat, and wedding tables also carry samp with beans and bogobe jwa lerotse, a sorghum porridge mixed with melon kept ready with sour milk. Men prepare seswaa themselves: the meat simmers with little more than salt in an iron pot set on three legs until soft, then is pounded. Serobe, the offal dish, belongs to these feasts too. A free-range chicken cooked for a guest is a mark of high honour, yet beef remains the meat of ceremony.