Culinary Explorer
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Puaʻa Umu (Sāmoan Umu-Roasted Pork, Oven Adapted)
Created by Chef Makoa
Sāmoa’s puaʻa umu, the toʻonaʻi pork from the above-ground hot-stone umu, brought into a home oven with banana leaf, salt, smoke, and patient hands.
The first time I sat at a Sāmoan umu, the old men let the young ones do the lifting and the stacking, and I did what a Hawaiian cousin should do: I watched more than I talked. Umu, the Sāmoan earth oven, is not a pit like the imu back home in Hawaiʻi. The stones sit above the ground, heated hard, then the food is layered over them, leaf and pork and fish and palusami, all of it covered until the fire gives the family its meal.
Ingredients
bone-in pork shoulder or picnic shoulder (puaʻa)
Quantity
1 (5 to 6 pounds)
coarse sea salt
Quantity
2 tablespoons
plus more to taste
brown sugar (optional)
Quantity
1 tablespoon
for browning
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| bone-in pork shoulder or picnic shoulder (puaʻa) | 1 (5 to 6 pounds) |
| coarse sea saltplus more to taste | 2 tablespoons |
| brown sugar (optional)for browning | 1 tablespoon |
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