Before embarking on this spice route, let’s acknowledge the giant rooster in the room. Yes, I’m talking about Nando’s, the “Portuguese” chain that’s been building its Australian empire since 1990. With silly adverts and addictive chips, Nando’s – named after co-founder Fernando Duarte – sold us peri-peri as both an idea and a neatly packaged bottle.
Variations of the sauce have been around since the 15th century when the Portuguese settlers in Africa came across the ingredient – an African bird’s eye chilli – and made a marinade with garlic, red wine vinegar, paprika and other European imports. Five hundred years on, the exact origins of this recipe are still debated as both and Portuguese-Mozambicans claim to have created the special mix. Regardless, the recipe remains a celebration of the cultural legacy and culinary fusions of the region.
A note on nomenclature
The chilli and the sauce itself is known as ’ in Portuguese. It takes its name from Swahili – ‘piri-piri’ means ‘pepper-pepper’ – and has morphed into several iterations, including ‘pili-pili’ and ‘peri-peri’. The latter translation is widely used in South Africa, home to countless chicken shops and the first-ever Nando’s.
Basting rights
For South African-born chef Duncan Welgemoed, peri-peri chicken is not only a staple dish, it’s a national icon.
“Peri-peri chicken is South African in my opinion,” he contests. “It has its cultural resonance out of Portugal and Mozambique, but it’s done to the extreme by South Africans. All the best Mozambican chefs move to Johannesburg and showcase peri themselves, but it’s also so popular because of the large number of Portuguese living there.”
At his Adelaide restaurant Africola, Welgemoed prepares peri-peri that’s “about as good as you can get at a restaurant”, but concedes that the most iconic peri-peri chicken comes from the oldest pub in South Africa – in Orange Grove, Johannesburg.
So how does Portuguese chicken fit into the equation?
Well first up, it’s piri-piri not peri-peri, and second, in Portugal you’re less likely to find a rich, spicy sauce than a simple chilli oil.
Chef and co-owner of Sydney’s Bibo Wine Bar Jose Silva says spiciness isn’t part of the Portuguese constitution.
“I grew up eating a little bit, but as Portuguese we don’t use a lot of chilli in cooking,” he explains. “Everyone thinks piri-piri is all we do, but that’s not true.”
Silva says it was during the Mozambican and Angolan wars of independence that many Portuguese returned to their homeland, bringing a penchant for charcoal cooking and, of course, piri-piri (the chilli) itself.
“I came to Australia [from Portugal] when was 12 and every time I go back I’ll try charcoal chicken places,” he says. “Normally it’s served with chilli-infused oil, not like what you’d get at Nando’s or Oporto.”
Hot stuff
Portuguese diners mightn’t appreciate great heat, but the African bird’s eye chilli does pack a punch. Growing natively across the lower two-thirds of the continent, it’s commonly cultivated in and around Zambia and Zimbabwe and, depending on the crop, can register up to 175,000 heat units on the Scoville scale. If you’re after some , that makes piri-piri hotter than the pint-sized, yet powerful Thai chilli (50,000-100,000 units) and less fiery than the infamous ‘ghost chilli’ (bhut jolokia) which registers a startling one million units.
According to Welgemoed, the chillies are pleasurable to eat because of their savoury, yet spicy profile, adding “they won’t blow your head off.”
To his the chef adds acidity, usually in the form of red wine vinegar or lemon, along with a few fragrant ingredients such as garlic or bay leaves.
“I think mixing chicken with these flavours opens [peri-peri up] to the flavour profiles of all demographics and regions – be it in Asia, America or England,” he says.
So whether you call it peri-peri or piri-piri – or credit any number of the countries visited above – the popularity of this chilli sauce across continents and centuries proves it’s a keeper.
