South African Savoury Tart (Sout Tert)

A South African savoury tart (or sout tert) is a popular South African recipe, made with chopped sausages and hard-boiled eggs, mixed in a creamy cheese sauce, and baked in a pastry shell. It’s a favourite at any get-together, and a slice of this savoury tart makes delicious quick and easy lunch.

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South African Sout Tert Recipe

When my daughter Kathy, who lives in South Africa, was over for a visit not too long ago, her first words to me were ‘please put that savoury tart up on your website – you know the one – the sout tert that ouma used to make’.

This savoury tart has long been a family favourite, making its appearance at various get-togethers over the years. It’s made by chopping sausages and hard-boiled eggs, and mixing these with a creamy cheese sauce. It is then baked in a crispy shortcrust pastry case. To be honest, it is so easy to make, I’m surprised she can’t remember how to make it.

Sout tert (pronounced Sowt Tert) is the Afrikaans name for this recipe. Sout means either salt or savoury depending on the context in which you use it. So in this case, sout tert simply means savoury tart.

Back in the day, when my mother-in-law first showed me how to make it, a savoury tart was made with red vienna sausages. In those days, vienna sausages were of very dubious origin. The outer skin was a lurid pinkish-red colour, and the inner meat was a very highly processed ‘something’. It was probably best that we didn’t know what that ‘something’ was. I believe that there are regulations in place now, to prohibit the addition of all the colourings that were added.

Luckily, I’ve found a substitute for the old-time viennas. Lidl does a very nice range of German bockwurst which I use instead. And even if I say it myself, I think it tastes better than the original version.

So Kathy, here is the sout tert recipe you asked for.

What you will need

Equipment

This recipe is sufficient for a 10″ x 8″ x 2.5″ baking dish, but you may find you have a little pastry left over. I normally make 2 tarts, one of them in a 9″ x 7* dish and another smaller one in a 6″ x 4″ dish. There is enough filling, and it means I use up all the pastry.

If you are going to be making your own pastry, you will need a mixing bowl and a rolling pin.

You will also need a saucepan for making the cheese sauce, and a sharp knife and a chopping board for cutting up the eggs and sausages.

Ingredients

**You can get the complete list of ingredients and full instructions on how to make this savoury tart on the printable recipe card at the end of this post**

• Hard-boiled eggs – shelled and sliced
• Bockwurst sausages (or good quality Vienna sausages) – chopped into rounds.
• Grated cheddar cheese – you can use any cheese that you would normally use for cooking.
• Butter – don’t use margarine, butter gives a much better flavour.
• Cornflour/cornstarch – this is used for thickening the filling
• Milk – full-cream or semi-skimmed, it doesn’t matter.
• Salt – this is optional
• Ground black pepper – black pepper always goes well with eggs

You will also need

• 1 quantity of shortcrust pastry – you can get instructions for making shortcrust pastry from this Bacon and Egg Pie recipe, or you can buy a roll of ready-made shortcrust pastry in the supermarket.

What to do

In a nutshell, here’s what you have to do:

• Chop up the eggs and sausages.
• Make the cheese sauce.
• Line your baking dish
• Assemble and bake

Cheese sauce

Assemble and bake

You should store the cooled tart in a covered container in the refrigerator, but it does taste best at room termperature. For this reason you should remove it from the refrigerator half an hour before serving.

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Storage and reheating

This dish is not suitable for freezing as it may split and become watery once defrosted.

However, you can make it up to 3 days in advance and store covered in the refrigerator.

It can be reheated in either in a hot oven for about 8 minutes or in the microwave, or left on the counter for half an hour to come to room temperature

Save for later

If you’d like to try this savoury tart for yourself, why not pin the recipe to one of your Pinterest boards so you can find it easily. Just click on the image below.

Alternatively, you can save the recipe by clicking on the floating heart icon on the right-hand side of the screen.

Other South African recipes

If you enjoyed this savoury tart you may also like to try some of my other South African recipes. These are my favourites.

• Koeksisters
• Lamb bredie
• Bobotjie
• Dom Pedro

Or why not have a browse through all my South African recipes.

The recipe

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