Sadza or Tadza?

Sadza is a food that unites all of us Zimbabweans. We believe that it can be eaten at any time, anywhere – and don’t even think about adding any flavourings such as salt, herbs or cheese.

Well, imagine this: someone has invented an electric cooker that is set to revolutionise the way we cook sadza. What will we make of a sadza machine?

I was able to find out for myself when I met Caroline Gundu, the enterprising woman who has just launched her very own electric sadza cooker.

As a busy consultant and catering business owner, Caroline was looking for a faster way to cook sadza as her menus included so many dishes that used it as an ingredient. Caroline spent a long time looking for a device that could help her but she found nothing. It was then that she began thinking about pressure cookers and slow cookers, wondering if they could in some way be developed to work for sadza.

With this in mind, Caroline partnered with an appliance producer and together they began to develop the electric sadza cooker. Initially Caroline had no plans to make the cooker available commercially, she just wanted something to help her own business. But the response from friends and family made her think again. She started receiving pre-orders from people who had never even seen the machine, and realised that there was a real gap in the market.

Caroline insists that her machine is not an invention but an innovation driven by realising the value of time. Making sadza is a long process and this machine can save precious minutes, enabling the chef to do other things. Stirring sadza is also so physical: Caroline speaks of the many people who suffer from arthritis thanking her for making sadza cooking so much easier. “I’m an African girl who has created an African solution that’s African-funded,” she says.

As a chef, Caroline was also concerned that the cooker could make sadza that tasted the same each time. She travelled to China, where the machine was being made, and was involved in every stage of the manufacturing process, checking that the cooker produced top-quality sadza again and again. I have tried the cooker, and the sadza it produces passes the taste test – the subtle sweetness that I love so much is still there.

Caroline’s sadza cooker is an eight-in-one energy-saving multi-cooker: in it you can make soup, steam ingredients, slow cook meats and make other traditional dishes such as nhopi (thick peanut butter and pumpkin porridge). She hopes that she will soon have the authorisation to supply the Zimbabwean market at an accessible price so that, as her product motto says, “Anyone can cook sadza”.

Some traditions deserve innovation, and this sadza cooker is hopefully the start of an evolution of our cooking practices.

We wish you the best of luck, Caroline!

IG: @cookingwithcaz

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SADZA OR TADZA?