San Foraged Protein · Roasted Wild Bean
Morama Bean (Roasted Gemsbok Bean)
📷 Closely related photo — Photo: Bonolo Nikita Rankaga / Wikimedia Commons · CC0
Morama beans are traditionally roasted by burying them directly in hot sand, a cooking method as old as the Kalahari foraging traditions of the San themselves.
The large, protein-rich seeds of a wild desert legume are picked from pods on its sprawling vines, then roasted — often in hot sand — until they take on a flavour compared to cashew or chestnut. Around Ghanzi, home to Botswana's largest San communities, they're eaten as a snack or ground into a milky drink, and the plant's large underground tuber is eaten when young.
Why it's made this way: With protein content rivalling soybeans, morama has sustained San and Naro communities across the Kalahari for generations, long before it drew scientific interest as an underused desert crop.
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Part of World of Street Food — 3443 dishes from 118 countries.
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