Trust me, it's worth it.
Sort of.
Anyways, this morning we uncovered the pit:
Those are the banana leaves.
The pit was still pretty hot considering we left it for about twelve hours.
More on that later.
Voila!
The main course:
Cooked to perfection!
The pig is wrapped in some chicken wire so all the part don't just well, fall apart.
Which is what happens once you unwrap it:
The meat is literally falling off the bones.
Then all that is left is the bones:
The meat is then pulled apart and more salt is added as needed.
My family is so efficient, the whole pig was processed in about 90 minutes:
Then we mostly just sat around and ate whatever was left over.
Oh and all that other stuff that was in the imu.
We ate it I mean.
We don't usually do an imu often, obviously because of all the prep and the time involved.
I think next time we're going to do a hind quarter on a spit, but I need to search my Dad's house for the spit.
We did have a lot of food and boy lemme just predict right now that I gained about five pounds.
My fish didn't turn out so good as it dried out, probably because it was in there so long and because I didn't prep it correctly.
I'll do better next time.
Okay, so there you go, a contemporary spin on an old tradition.
The Hawaiian imu, or in the ground oven.
