COPPERLaplap recipe
Vanuatu's national dish: grated taro paste soaked in coconut cream, wrapped in banana leaves and cooked on hot stones in an earth oven.
Ingredients
- 1000 g taro
- 400 ml coconut cream
- 4 banana leaves
- 300 g pork
- 1 tsp salt
How to make Laplap
- Peel 1 kg of taro (yam, manioc, breadfruit or green banana are also used) and grate it finely into a smooth paste.
- Soften 4 large banana leaves over a flame and lay them crosswise to make a wide, leak-free base.
- Spread the paste about 3 cm thick on the leaves and season with 1 tsp of salt.
- Lay 300 g of pork pieces on the paste, then pour 400 ml of fresh coconut cream over everything.
- Fold the leaves tightly into a closed parcel and tie it.
- Traditionally the parcel is set on stones heated in a fire pit, covered with leaves and earth, and left for a few hours until the paste is firm; a home oven does not reproduce this earth-oven cooking.
- Open the leaves, cut the laplap into pieces and serve it warm.
What is Laplap?
Laplap is a traditional dish from Vanuatu, baked in the oven, and takes about 3 hours and 30 minutes from start to finish. It is built around taro, coconut cream and pork. The recipe below uses 5 ingredients and is written out step by step.
How long does Laplap take?
At 210 minutes it is slower than 73% of the 586 dishes in Copper's atlas. Copper's atlas has 4 dishes built on taro. The method runs to 7 steps.
Any tips for making Laplap?
Fold the banana leaves into a tightly closed parcel so the coconut cream stays in the taro paste while it cooks on the hot stones.
Cooked with the same thing elsewhere
Other traditional dishes built on taro, from other countries.
Copper documents Vanuatu alongside 197 other countries. Every recipe is free to read, with the full ingredient list and every step.