Boerewors in Canada: How to Get a Canadian Butcher to Make It Properly
You walk into a butcher shop, ask if they make boerewors in Canada, and get a friendly blank look. Not because they can’t — because the word means nothing to them yet. The fix is describing the sausage, not naming it.
Describing it rather than naming it
Most independent Canadian butchers are used to custom sausage requests, and knowing how to ask a Canadian butcher to make boerewors is really just a matter of translation. Boerewors fits into that conversation once you describe it properly: a fresh, coarse-ground beef sausage, traditionally blended with some pork or lamb, seasoned with coriander, black pepper and nutmeg, with a little vinegar, stuffed in a natural casing as a long coil rather than twisted into links. A butcher who does custom grinds can usually work from that description alone, without ever needing the word itself.
Casing and grind, the two details that matter most
Getting the sausage casing and grind for boerewors right matters more than anything else on the list. Boerewors is traditionally coiled rather than linked — ask specifically for it left as a continuous rope, since that’s not the default most Canadian shops will assume. Natural beef or hog casing both work; the coarse grind matters more to the texture than the casing choice. If the shop’s standard grind is fine, ask for a coarser plate. It’s a small request most butchers will happily accommodate.
Bring your own spice if you can
If you have SA boerewors spice packed away, or a relative can post some, bringing it and asking the butcher to blend it into the meat tends to get the closest result. Some newcomers buy plain coarse-ground beef and pork, add their own spice at home, and stuff it themselves with a basic sausage attachment. It’s more work, and it removes the translation problem entirely.
Skipping the butcher counter entirely
South African and general African grocery shops in cities with a meaningful SA community — Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver among them — often stock frozen boerewors or SA spice blends. If knowing where to buy boerewors in Canada online matters more to you than the DIY route, some of these shops ship across provinces too. Worth checking before assuming you’ll need to build the whole thing from scratch with a stranger at a meat counter.
Freezing boerewors in bulk in Canada
Boerewors freezes well raw, in its coil, wrapped tightly to avoid freezer burn. Buying or making a large batch and portioning it down keeps a stock going without repeat butcher visits. Thaw it slowly in the fridge, the same as you would any raw sausage.
None of this needs to be a production. Most butchers want to make you a sausage you’ll come back for, and a clear description gets you further than the word itself ever will on its own. The first batch is usually the trial run; the second is the one that actually tastes like home.
Cape2Canada’s blog covers the small, unglamorous parts of settling in that nobody puts in an immigration guide — this is one of them.