Making Hawaiian pork lau lau using taro from our homestead and local organic pork. Cooked with solar energy in our Instant Pot!
My absolute favorite Hawaiian dish is pork lau lau, a rich and delicious meal that consists of taro leaf, pork, butterfish and often taro root or sweet potato. We’ve been putting a lot of love into our taro patch and are very fortunate to have been gifted taro plants that originated at the Kua O Ka La school that got covered in lava from the 2018 eruption.
We’ve been waiting and to be honest a bit intimated to make lau lau. But it turns out with some prep ahead of time and some extra hands to help, its super easy! Traditionally lau lau is cooked in an imu, an underground oven. We decided to try it in our Instant Pot for a quicker cooking time and a lot less effort. That being said, we have been cooking our Thanksgiving dinner with friends in an imu so this year we will definitely have to make lau lau for it as well. The other great thing about using our Instant Pot is that is uses our solar electricity to cook instead of using propane on the stovetop.
We used taro leaf (a must) as the outer wrapping and filled the lau lau with local organic pork, local sea salt, local sweet potato, the taro stems and butterfish. After filling the wrap you use ti leaves to wrap it into a package and tie it with string.
It was SO delicious and full of nutrition from the taro leaves and we are definitely going to make this a monthly tradition!
Delicious and nutritious!
Our expanding taro patch
Our little Jujube already loving being in the garden.
Peeling the taro stem before putting it in the lau lau.
All the ingredients prepped and ready.
Future deliciousness.
The lau lau gets wrapped up in ti leaves, tied and steamed.
