COPPERMumu recipe
A pit oven where river stones heated to 400 °C cook pork, tubers and greens wrapped in banana leaves under a mound of earth for several hours.
Ingredients
- 10 banana leaves
- 20 river stones
- 1500 g pork
- 1000 g sweet potato
- 500 g taro
- 500 ml coconut cream
- 4 cooking bananas
- 300 g leafy greens
- 2 tsp salt
How to make Mumu
- Dig a pit about 1 m across and 60 cm deep, fill it with firewood and pile roughly twenty black river stones on top. Burn for 2 to 3 hours until the stones reach 400–500 °C.
- While the stones heat, pass 10 large banana leaves over the fire to soften them without scorching.
- Cut 1.5 kg of pork into large pieces, 1 kg sweet potato and 500 g taro into chunks, and halve 4 cooking bananas. Salt everything and coat it with 500 ml coconut cream.
- Line the pit with banana leaves over a bed of the hot stones, lay the pork at the bottom, then the tubers, the bananas and 300 g of leafy greens on top.
- Tuck more hot stones between the layers, fold the leaf parcel closed, cover with fresh leaves and then with earth to seal in the steam.
- Leave it 3 to 4 hours without opening; the temperature around the food sits near 250 °C.
- Open the pit, clear the earth and leaves, and serve straight off the leaves — this is a communal feast dish, not an individual portion.
- Without a pit and stones you are not making a mumu: at home, wrap everything in banana leaves and bake 3 hours at 160 °C, knowing the smoky stone flavour will be missing.
What is Mumu?
Mumu is a traditional dish from Papua New Guinea, baked in the oven, and takes about 7 hours from start to finish. It is built around pork, sweet potato and taro. The recipe below uses 9 ingredients and is written out step by step.
How long does Mumu take?
At 420 minutes it is slower than 80% of the 586 dishes in Copper's atlas. Copper's atlas has 5 dishes built on pork. The method runs to 8 steps.
Any tips for making Mumu?
Soften the banana leaves over the fire without scorching them, and cover the pit with earth to seal in the steam, leaving it closed until the end.
How Mumu compares
Hard to find elsewhere: river stones (1), cooking bananas (1) and leafy greens (3).
Cooked with the same thing elsewhere
Other traditional dishes built on leafy greens, from other countries.
Copper documents Papua New Guinea alongside 197 other countries. Every recipe is free to read, with the full ingredient list and every step.