About braaimate

The braai is not negotiable.

Twenty years ago I stood in the international aisle of a Brisbane Woolworths, holding the wrong sausage, and realised the homesickness I had outrun for years had finally caught up with me. Braaimate is what I did about it.

How this started.

I left South Africa the way a lot of us did. Not running from anything, just walking towards something bigger. For a good while the adventure did the talking: new work, a coastline like a screensaver, weekends spent finding out how big this country actually is. Home barely crossed my mind, right up until the Sunday it did.

I wanted a braai. Not a barbecue, a braai. And I had no idea where to buy boerewors, what to use instead of Mrs Balls, or whether the flour on the shelf would betray my melktert. So I started keeping notes. Which shops stock what. Which swaps actually work. Which ones end in disappointment and takeaways. Twenty years of small discoveries, most of them made the hard way, tidied up and handed to you.

Who this is for.

South Africans in Australia who cook their homesickness rather than just talk about it. There are roughly 224,000 of us born back home, on the Department of Home Affairs figures for June 2024, and a 2026 Remitly study ranked us the second most homesick expats in the world, with food as one of our main ways of coping. In other words: the entire premise of this website is peer reviewed.

The mission.

No South African in Australia should stand in a supermarket aisle feeling defeated. There is a swap, a shop or a workaround for nearly everything, and this site intends to document every last one, tested, priced and honestly rated.

What we stand for.

• Tested, not guessed. Every swap is made in an Australian kitchen with ingredients from Australian shelves before it gets a word of praise here.
• We buy what we review. Where a link earns us a commission, the page says so at the top. Your trust is worth more than a referral fee.
• Checked or flagged. We never publish a figure, stockist or claim we have not verified. When something is unconfirmed, the page tells you that too.

Why trust a stranger with your braai?

Most braai content online is written by shops in the UK or back home, selling you something with a flag on it. Braaimate is written from an actual Australian backyard, by someone who has lost an entire batch of biltong to a Brisbane summer and lived to write the guide. The mistakes are pre-made. You get the shortcuts.

Warm, not bitter. Like a good braaibroodjie.

Say hallo.

Found a shop we have missed, a substitute that works better, or a Queensland biltong disaster you need to talk about? Email howzit@braaimate.com. If you write on 24 September, expect a slow reply. It is National Braai Day and we have priorities.