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Seswaa

Name: Seswaa
Total time: 180 min
Yield: Serves 6
Cuisine: Botswana
Ingredients: 1kg (bone-in) Beef Shank; 1 Onion; 2 tsp Salt; A pinch Black Pepper; 1.5L Water

Main Dish

⏱ 180 min

👥 Serves 6

Difficulty ⭐

Beef boiled tender with only salt and pounded apart with a wooden paddle — Botswana's national dish.

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📖 The Story Behind This Dish

Seswaa is Botswana's national dish: bone-in beef or mutton is boiled for hours with only salt and water, and the tender meat is pounded apart with a wooden paddle. Traditionally the men cook it in big pots on days when people gather — weddings, funerals, Independence Day. It's eaten with bogobe (sorghum porridge) and morogo (greens).

🌆 Where it's eaten: At a village wedding in Botswana, men around a three-legged pot shred meat with wooden sticks and heap it onto platters.

🥕 Ingredients (serves 6)

Beef Shank 1kg (bone-in)
Onion 1
Salt 2 tsp
Black Pepper A pinch
Water 1.5L

👩‍🍳 Instructions

Put the beef, water, and onion in a pot and skim the scum.
Cover and simmer on low for 2.5 hours until the meat falls off the bone.
Add salt and cook until almost all the liquid is gone.
Remove the bones and pound the meat with a wooden spoon until finely shredded.
Sprinkle with pepper and serve with bogobe.

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