Boerewors is a sausage dish, popular in South African cuisine and Limburgish cuisine. It comes from the Afrikaans words boer ("farmer") and wors ("sausage"). Most non-Afrikaans-speaking persons find it difficult to pronounce authentically. A reasonable approximation for foreigners is "Boo-ruh-vors" with a trilled r. (In Afrikaans the 'e' is added when you join the two nouns to form one, and isn't 'Boere' ie. plural of farmer.) Boerewors was probably invented about 200 years ago in The Netherlands. It is made from coarsely minced beef (sometimes combined with minced pork, lamb, or both) and spices (usually coriander seed, black pepper, nutmeg, cloves and allspice). Good boerewors always contains a reasonable proportion of fat. There is no such thing as "light boerewors" (but see comments below on cooking). The sausage is preserved with salt and vinegar, and packed in sausage casings. Traditional boerewors is usually formed into a continuous spiral, as illustrated on the right, and the spirals are usually immobilized by wooded skewers.
   There are many different varieties of boerewors today, including specialties such as garlic wors, kameeldoring (camel thorn), karoowors (sausage from the Karoo region), and spek wors (made from cubed pork fat). All varieties are distinctly flavored with coriander and vinegar.
   Boerewors is usually braaied (barbecued) but may be grilled in an electric griller, or fried, or boiled. When grilled or braaied, boerewors sheds a great deal of its fat and is therefore not necessarily a "cardiac catastrophe".
   Boerewors itself doesn't keep well unrefrigerated and a dried version of the sausage, called droë wors ("DROO-uh-vors"), was prepared instead in days of yore for long trips or treks. However, in modern times droë wors has become popular in its own right as a snack.

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