It's a record: 2km of South African sosatie

Employees of a Newcastle steel company have made it into the Guinness World Records book with a 2km-long braaied sosatie.

The ArcelorMittal Newcastle Works staffers made the 2 047,47m-long sosatie by dividing it into 50m lengths, with each section manned by 11 sosatie assemblers, publicist Paula Marais said.

They threaded 3 100kg of beef, 3 600 onions, 24 500 dried peaches and 4 500 green peppers on to the metal lengths. These were then joined up and cooked over 15 000kg of charcoal smouldering in specially dug trenches on the company’s property.

The idea was the brainchild of the company’s human resources manager, Hannes Liebenberg, who had spent years pondering the perfect design for the couplings between sosatie sections, said Marais.

The attempt was to have taken place last Friday but the first heavy summer rains and golf-ball-sized hailstones put a damper on that.

So the next day staff members had to race around Newcastle looking for more charcoal in order to try again.

They succeeded on Saturday and, after the Guinness representative had confirmed that the record exceeded the previous record of 1 554m, large portions of the food were donated to the area’s charities.—Sapa