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This page is about the cuisine of the New Zealand Māori. For the cuisine of Māori from the Cook Islands, see Cook Islands cuisine.
A Māori hangi, a traditional method of cooking food.
Māori cuisine (Māori: Kai Māori) refers to the culinary traditions and practices of the Māori people of New Zealand. Māori food culture is derived from the traditional culinary practices of the Polynesians within the tropical pacific that has been adapted to New Zealand’s seasonal climate conditions. Māori cuisine has been heavily influenced by other cultures, with the most notable influence coming from British cuisine.
The Māori people are descendants of Polynesian settlers who arrived to New Zealand as a result of mass migration events from the Southern Cook Islands and the Society Islands. The Polynesian settlers brought numerous plant and animal species with them, but New Zealand’s temperate, seasonal climate meant that very few of the plant species introduced survived. The food crops that did survive were sweet potato (kūmara), taro (taro), yam (uwhi), calabash (hue) and ti (tī pore).[1] Of the crops that were introduced by Māori, Kūmara had the widest distribution, growing as far south as Banks Peninsula and thus become the dominant crop grown by Māori. The southernmost limits for the other crops included the Cook Strait for taro and calabash, with taro being grown in the north-western South Island. Yams being grown around Tolaga Bay and ti growing in a few favourable sites in the Northland Peninsula. Forests were cleared and the land was extensively modified to grow many of the tropical cultigens. [2] Even though they failed to thrive in the new climate, the names of coconut (niu), breadfruit (kuru) and even rice (ari), a crop once cultivated by the ancestors of the Polynesians in Southeast Asia continued to be passed down through oral tradition.[3][4]
Hangi were also used in processing. The long cooking time was used to convert the saccharine matter of Cordyline roots into a molasses-like pulp, detoxify karaka kernels and for extracting seed oils.
These are the plants that were cultivated by Māori for food in New Zealand. Many of these plants were cultigens brought over to New Zealand from tropical Polynesia, though some native plants were also cultivated for food. In Māori mythology, cultivated crops fell under the god Rongo.
Rua Kūmara, storage pits dug out into a sloping hill used to preserve kūmara.
Māori had utilised numerous preservation methods. In response to New Zealand’s seasonal climate, in contrast to the tropics, preservation of food was employed to provide a constant source of food throughout the winter months. Preserving food also provided a realible source during times of war or famine.
The first sighting of New Zealand and subsequent contact by European sailors had greatly influenced and changed the Māori diet. European crops were eagerly adopted by Māori as they were more adapted to New Zealand’s climate and often provided higher yields than the original cultigens. The most notable example being the Potato
This describes a list of dishes made by Māori after European contact, usually made with ingredients and cooking techniques introduced by foreign settlers:
Boil up – A soup made from pork bone broth, containing a variety of vegetables and dumplings.
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