Australians are magnificent at many things. Calling a braai a barbie is not one of them. Here is the difference, explained with love, by someone who now owns both.
By The Braaimate. Updated July 2026.
Roughly 224,000 South African-born people live in Australia, according to Department of Home Affairs figures for June 2024. Most of us have had this conversation at least once a summer. A colleague hears you are having a braai and says, kindly, “a barbie.” You smile. You do not correct them. But something inside you quietly sits down and puts its head in its hands.
Braai vs bbq is the argument that will not die at a shared Australian gathering, so let’s have it properly, once, in writing.
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A braai is fire. A bbq is heat.
The Australian barbecue is, most of the time, a gas appliance. Turn a knob, get a flame, cook a snag, done in twenty minutes. It is efficient, and efficiency is precisely the problem. A braai starts with wood or charcoal, and the fire is not a means to an end. It is the end. You light it early. You watch it burn down to coals with the seriousness of a man defusing a bomb. Nobody rushes a fire, and nobody worth knowing tries.
This is the first thing to understand. Gas is cooking. Coals are a ceremony.
Choosing a fuel is its own small decision. If you are still weighing up charcoal versus briquettes for your own braai, settle it before your next one, because the wrong bag turns a ceremony into a chore. And if this is your first fire on Australian soil, check what your state actually allows before you strike a match. The rules vary more than most new arrivals expect, and a fine is a poor way to learn that.
The braai is a place, not a task
Ask an Australian where the barbie is and they point at the appliance. Ask a South African where the braai is and they point at the whole afternoon. The braai is the fire, the people around it, the second beer while the coals settle, the argument about whether the wors is ready (it is not, sit down). It has no set finish time. A barbecue ends when the food is cooked. A braai ends when the last person leaves, and sometimes not even then.
The boerewors question
You cannot discuss a braai without boerewors, the coiled sausage that anchors the whole event. Getting it right in Australia takes a little effort. The good butchers here will make a proper coarse-ground wors if you ask, and the South African shops carry the real thing. Do not, under any circumstances, accept a thin supermarket snag as a substitute and call it the same meal. It is a fine sausage. It is not wors.
And then there is the braaibroodjie, the toasted sandwich that quietly outranks the meat. If you have never made one over dying coals, start there. We wrote the whole method, Australian ingredients included, in our braaibroodjies recipe.
What the Australians get gloriously right
None of this is a complaint, and here is where the homesickness softens. Australians understand the important part perfectly: that cooking outdoors is really about gathering people, feeding them generously, and staying out until the light goes. The snag in white bread with onions and sauce is a genuinely great thing. The welcome at an Aussie barbecue is as warm as any braai I grew up with. The word is different. The heart is the same.
But South Africans use gas too, be honest
A fair objection. Plenty of South African homes keep a gas braai on the patio for a weeknight, and there is no shame in it. The point was never that gas is wrong. It is that the default, the thing we mean when we say the word, is fire. In Australia the default is gas, and the fire is the exception. Swap the defaults and you have swapped the culture. That is the whole difference in one sentence.
The ingredient problem, and the fix
The harder part of braaing here is not the fire. It is the shopping. Half the flavours you grew up with hide under different names on Australian shelves, or vanish entirely. Maizena, Mrs Balls, the right cut for wors. We keep a running list of what to buy instead, from Tennis biscuits to Nik Naks, in our South African ingredient substitutes guide.
Why this argument matters more than it should
There is a reason the word fight will not die down, and it is not just stubbornness. National Braai Day, the South African initiative behind 24 September, frames a braai as heritage rather than a cooking method: a shared fire that pulls people from every background around it, on a day South Africa built into the calendar for exactly that purpose. We wrote a longer guide to marking National Braai Day from Australia, coals, calendar clash and all. Call it what you like on the other three hundred and sixty four days. On that one, get it right.
So what do you call it?
Here is the ruling, from an expat who now owns both a gas barbie and a proper braai and uses each without shame. Call it a barbecue when there is gas involved and you are cooking on a Tuesday. Call it a braai when there is a real fire, no clock, and at least one conversation that goes nowhere for an hour. The difference is not the equipment. It is the intention. One feeds you. The other keeps you.
So the next time someone calls your braai a barbie, you have two choices. Correct them gently, or hand them a plate, pour them a drink, and let the fire make the argument for you. We recommend the plate.
Frequently asked questions
Braai vs bbq: is it just two words for the same thing?
Not quite. A barbecue can mean gas, electric or coals, and it usually just describes the equipment. A braai specifically means a wood or charcoal fire, plus the slow ritual built around it. Every braai could loosely be filed under barbecue. Not every barbecue earns the word braai.
What is the real difference between a braai and an Aussie barbie?
Mostly the fuel and the pace. An Australian barbie is very often gas, quick, and built around convenience. A braai is built around fire and patience, and the food is almost secondary to the sitting around it happens over. Neither is wrong. They are just answering different questions.
Can I still braai in Australia if I only own a gas barbecue?
You can cook everything the same way on gas, and nobody will take your citizenship away over it. But if you want the real thing, a kettle braai or a simple fire pit and some hardwood coals will get you there properly, and it does not need to cost much to start.
Do South Africans in Australia still mark National Braai Day on 24 September?
Plenty do, weekday or not. It usually means smaller and earlier than back home, but the fire still gets lit, and the flag still turns up on the tongs if someone in the group owns one.
Why do South Africans care so much about boerewors at a braai?
Because a braai without boerewors is just a barbecue with extra steps. See the actual difference between wors and an ordinary snag in our boerewors vs sausage guide, and do not let anyone hand you a thin supermarket sausage and call it the same thing.
