4,000-Year-Old Ferment · Sour Sorghum Porridge
Ting ya Mabele (Fermented Sorghum Porridge)
Photo: LoatilePro14 / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
Ting's tang comes from wild lactic-acid fermentation of sorghum meal left to sour for two to three days before it's ever cooked — the same bacterial process behind yoghurt.
Sorghum meal is soaked and left to ferment for a couple of days, then cooked into a thick, mildly sour porridge. Around Francistown, home to Botswana's largest Kalanga community, it's eaten at breakfast or alongside meat and morogo, and it's been recognised by Slow Food's Ark of Taste as a heritage grain product worth preserving.
Why it's made this way: The fermentation technique is at least 4,000 years old in Tswana and Kalanga cooking, prized both for its sour flavour and for how it preserves grain through the region's hot months.
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