Put Down a Hangi
A Hangi is an old way of cooking food as done by the Maori people of Aotearoa (New Zealand) today and by their ancestors before them. Today a hangi is prepared for special occasions. Basically it involves cooking in the ground, though you can use more modern methods and prepare a hangi using special stainless steel technology. Both produce yummy food.
Contents
Steps
- Note traditional Hangi is prepared in the ground. It is a lengthy process taking up to four hours just for the cooking. Preparing the food will take at least an hour or two depending on how many people are available to help. The more, the better!
- Prepare potatoes, kumara (sweet potato), carrots, onions, and other vegetables first. Wash them after peeling and trimming. Lots of people helping is good and everybody can have a good korero (gossip or chat).
- Know that in the meantime others can dig a hole about knee deep and about two metres in diameter. Fill it up with wood (slow burning and high energy content), pile up some volcanic stones on top, or large lumps of steel. Heat these up for a few hours, keep adding wood if necessary. Maybe two to three hours of burning.
- Remove the embers and unburnt wood when the stones/steel are red hot.
- Have the vegetables ready to go in wire baskets (chicken wire is good.
- The meat should be ready to go also. Whatever you or your group prefer. Put the meat under the vegetables in the basket as it will take longer to cook.
- Essentially the cooking is a steaming process with some direct heat from the stones on the lower layers of food.
- Cover the baskets with nice white and clean cotton cloth (sheets or old table cloths - but make sure they are clean) which are completely wet. Put wet sacks (hessian) over these cloths so that no earth can get onto the food.
- Now shovel earth over the sacks carefully and make sure that no steam can escape. If you see steam escaping put some more earth on that spot.
- Have some people stand by and keep an eye on the hangi whilst it cooks for about three to four hours. Better to leave it longer and make sure it is well and truly cooked. Everyone else can have some time off until serving time arrives. Don't take your eye off the mound of earth in the meantime though
- Learn that when the time to open the Hangi has arrived you will need a number of people with shovels to carefully remove the layer of earth. Be very careful as you sensitively remove the earth. You do not want to spoil the food at this stage.
- Carry the baskets to tables and serve it up to the old people first after someone has said grace.
- Eat up.
Tips
- If preparing food in aluminium trays, add an extra couple of trays full of water to keep meat moist.
- Some people these days pre-pack the food into aluminium containers for individual consumption. When sealed with cardboard lids this makes sure that the food does not get spoilt with earth. The containers are stacked up in the wire baskets and then covered with cloth followed by sacking.
- It's good to have tin foil or lettuce under your meat or vegetables.
Warnings
- Please keep in mind this is just a brief explanation of each step on how to hangi. Please do not try to hangi based off of this list alone you will surely ruin your hangi.
- Make sure you cover the food well, otherwise you will spoil the food.
- Cleanliness is very important.
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