Taro cooking in Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea has a huge range of taro varieties, yet very little has been recorded about how taro is actually used there. Traditionally, the two main methods may be cooking with a stew in an earthenware pot, and baking on hot stones (mumu), in a pit or at the ground surface, with leaves and soil as a cover. The surface method is illustrated in the Tok-Pisin/English Dictionary.

Anne MacGregor (1977) Papua New Guinea Cookbook, Jacaranda Press (pp. 18-20) gives a number of recipes for taro that seem to have been adapted European food tastes.

The best book by far on food in PNG generally is A Guide to Bush Foods, Markets and Culinary Arts of Papua New Guinea, by R.J. May (1984) (published by Robert Brown and Associates).

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