Māori Food

Māori food (kai Māori) is the traditional cuisine of New Zealand's indigenous Māori people, built around ingredients from the land and sea of Aotearoa: seafood and shellfish, birds, kūmara (sweet potato), pork, and native plants such as kawakawa, horopito, and pūhā. Its signature cooking method is the hāngī, an earth oven in which food is set on heated stones, covered with wet cloth, leaves, and soil, and left to slow-cook - letting large quantities of food cook at once while keeping in natural flavor and moisture. Other traditional methods include smoking and drying for preservation. The cuisine remains closely tied to Māori cultural identity, and modern New Zealand chefs and restaurants continue to draw on its ingredients and techniques alongside contemporary approaches.