Explain pit roasting to me.

Factual Questions
1

I’ve never been to a clambake or a luau or any other feast involving putting food in a pit and covering it up. I’ve never even seen one. How does that work? I gather you build a fire in a pit and let it burn down to coals. Then you put seaweed or leaves or whatever on top, and then the food, and then you fill in the pit. After a while you dig out the food. Is that right?

I also remember seeing something in a movie (Jeremiah Johnson?) where a fire is built in a pit, the pit is filled in, and that kept the frontiersman warm all night.

How do the coals keep burning when they’re covered up? When I want to put the coals out in my little grill, I put the lid on.

2

No expert here, but I believe it is the residual heat from the surrounding sand plus the burning coals are still pretty hot. The food cooks pretty quickly. It is more a solution to cooking lots of food all at once.

I like to marinade a large roast, let the fire burn down to the right point, shut the lid on my grill and close off the vent holes. Putting some hickory chips in there helps too.

3

My experience is with hangi or umu, the earth oven used by maori in NZ.

You start with a fire and stones - the stones need to hold heat without cracking or crumbling (river stones are right out - they can explode when the water in them expands). Fire-bricks or old railway brake shoes are a good modern alternative. Iron or steel gives up the heat too quickly and can burn the food.

Once the stones are hot, you rake them out of the fire into the pit, and cover with damp sacks. Then the trays of food are layered on, meat and kai moana (seafood - fish, clams, mussels, crayfish, lobster, abalone) first, then potatoes, kumara (sweet potato), pumpkin, puha (sow thistle), corn and other veges are put on, more damp sacks cover everything and then the whole lot is covered with dirt to stop the heat and steam escaping. Leave in the ground for several hours, lift and serve with rewena bread (potato based sourdough bread). Yum. :smiley:

The effect is to steam with pressure (up to 4 psi), roast with heat (300[sup]o[/sup]C), and trap the dripping juices on the hot rocks, producing distinctive flavour elements. A company in NZ spent years developing a commercial hangi cooking process for mass produced food that had the right flavour elements.

Kalua use an imu or umu, which is similar to a hangi. A clambake is the same, using stones or cannonballs, and seaweed instead of sacks.

I wonder if I could persuade the vicar to let me lay a hangi in the vicarage garden at the end of summer, as a church fundraiser. That would be a whole lot of fun, but leave him with a big hole in his lawn.

Si

4

I’m not sure how it works, but it sounds delicious and deserves a bump. si_blakely has got me literally drooling on my keyboard.

5

This is something that grows everywhere here - and I know it’s edible, but haven’t yet got around to trying it - how is it prepared (I mean, apart from the cooking method you described) - is it the roots or the top growth that’s eaten, and if it’s the top growth, is it wrapped in bundles or something?

6

It is just the leaves and stalks, rubbed together under running water a few times, then steamed in bunches or tossed on top of boiled pork bones. Try here for ideas.

Si

7

this whole thread is giving me ideas =)

I think running the idea past the vicar is a good one … it would make a great fundraiser. you can always fill the pit in afterwards=)

I am hoping one day to get to the other side of the world, I want to dive the great barrier reef in australia, and go to visit a maori area and learn about the foods [and i promise to bring food as well =) ]in NZ, and do some island hopping.

8

Vicarage garden, maybe. Churchyard, probably not.

9

When we were kids we used to joke about pakeha[sup]1[/sup] and puha :wink:

We have just applied for a faculty[sup]2[/sup] to redevelop the church extension. One set of plans had to be redrawn because it covered graves that were less than 70 years old. The current plans still involve many older graves. While the foundations are going in…

Si

1: white person
2: planning permission from the Bishop/Diocese

10

We roasted a whole pig in the ground a few years ago. Built a fire, put rocks around and in the fire, we did use river rock without any problems. Dug the pit, wrapped pig with wet burlap bags, stuffed pig with apples and a bunch of other stuff, put rocks in pit with pig on top and covered the whole thing up so no air could get out.

We dug it up after about 10 hours and the pig practically fell apart it was so tender. But the effect was more like steamed or boiled meat rather than roasted. Nice experiment but pretty bland tasting.

The next year we roasted one on a motorized spit so that the drippings coated the pig as it turned. Much better!

11

Pit roasting is our fall-back position for cooking a turkey at Thanksgiving if it’s too windy to run the deep-fryer. Just dig out the fire pit (which is pretty damn hot from 48 hours of campfire by this point, through in a bag of charcoal, let it get good and gray, season, rub and wrap the turkey, tossit in the pit and bury it for 4 hours or so. Always turns out perfect.

12

So there’s not actually combustion going on, and what I was missing in the OP was the rocks.

Nice post on the theory! :slight_smile:

13

This can be the case with hangi, too, and given that the default meat is pork and mutton, it can be a bit fatty. But it can be brilliant.

I was thinking about it on the way home from work - a really big terracotta pot, a big gas ring, a deep layer of BBQ rocks or fire bricks, some wire baskets, sacks and a heavy lid to fit. Sounds like a plan for later in summer.

Si

14

Not all techniques completely stop the combustion. I don’t know how carefully you watch your grill after you close it up, but it will keep producing heat for a long time. In fact, I will intentionally close my grill as tight as I can to keep the heat low and consistent. (For example, I do this when smoking turkeys, when I want it to take 8-10 hours before the internal temperature gets up over 168 F.)

But, yes, some techniques do just use hot sand or hot rocks to do the cooking, and may totally remove the charcoal. Dirt is an excellent insulator, so you can keep the heat trapped for a very long time.

I have been involved in pit-roasting pork a couple of times. The time that came out best, we did leave some charcoal in the pit (nicer, smokier flavor that was less like steaming the pig as the other poster remarked), and we layered everything like this:
dirt - coals - rocks - banana leaves - pig - banana leaves - rocks - dirt.
We also put hot rocks inside the pig’s body cavity.

One of the times, someone couldn’t find the banana leaves, but got Bok Choi cabbage on the cheap. Let me just tell you that cabbage-flavored pork does NOT taste all that good.

15

First you piss someone off on these boards. Then on another forum they…
SLAP! OW!(pk wisely runs away.)

16

I’m not sure if it was the inspiration for this thread, but OP, Spit, has a few questions about pit roasting in Cafe Society. Perhaps someone with the experience could advise him and answer his questions?

17

Yes, that was the inspiration. But I was more curious about the mechanics of it than the café aspects.

18

I inspired ** Johnny L.A.** to start a thread…after a decade of enjoying your posts, this is pretty cool.

I am digging my pit as we speak. (needed a beer break :wink: )

19

Another cool cooking device is a china box … you split your critter and butterfly it, lay it on the rack inside and the coals go on top. There is also an optional grill you can fit to the top so you can burn some brats to gnaw on while you roast the piggy inside. Or it will do the whole rack of prime rib, or a whole bunch of chickens …

20

Well, what you do is you find someone or something you really hate and you make a thread talking about how much you hate him/her/it. That simple, really. Then someone will come into the thread and call you a moron or something.