Township Delicacy · Sheep's Head
Smiley
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The dish gets its cheerful name because singeing the head with a hot metal rod causes the sheep's lips to curl back and dry into what looks like an ear-to-ear grin.
A whole sheep's head, hair singed off, then boiled for about an hour with just salt until the meat pulls tender off the skull. Sold whole from roadside stands and taxi ranks, it's typically shared and eaten with pap, samp and beans, or chakalaka.
Why it's made this way: Cheap offcuts like sheep's heads were once dismissed as 'poor food' under apartheid-era food hierarchies; today smiley is embraced as township heritage cuisine and a fixture at taxi ranks nationwide.
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Part of World of Street Food — 3248 dishes from 118 countries.
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