Traditional Hawaiian Imu oven

[Gulf]

Nice thread. I had to read it twice. Then, I looked up the spelling of a certain fowl that I had a bad experience with while trying to cook......Emu....lol

[UtahBeehiver]

I see some good old poi............ and lau lau

[Boogie-D]

What the food looks like

[Boogie-D]

In Hawaii people cook food in what’s called an imu pit.. basically a hole in the ground with lava rocks...

to cook you build a raging fire in the hole/imu/oven.... then as it burns down you put in your lava rocks... the good dry porous kind... not basalt, that stuff explodes into dangerous schrapnel...

next you line the oven floor with banana leaf and thin strips of banana stump (creates steam) so you can rest your food on it

then you place your food in the oven and cover well with more banana leaf snd stump (flavor)... then you cover the whole imu with wet burlap sacks and then cover with plastic... then cover the whole imu with the dirt you dug the imu pit with....

we still often cook like this.. we did our last thanksgiving this way... my imu pit can hold 4 aluminum turkey trays... we generally will do 2 trays of pork butt.. and 2 trays of lau lau (pork or chicken wrapped up in taro leaf with a peice of salmon and taro root) it’s really good... however takes a long time to do it the traditional way.. it takes a long time to set up and then 10-12 hours underground cooking... then you got to dig all your food out... it taste amazing but a lot of work

its one reason I am so intrested in building a wood fired pizza oven.. basically a wfo is a very hi tech above ground imu pit.. we will be able to do a lot of traditional Hawaiian food in the wfo much easier snd quicker.. my wife is Hawaiian and loves the wfo concept... attached are pics of our imu... aloha