Welcome back! This week my little hot air balloon of culinary curiosity took me wayyy southeast to the wonderful country of Papua New Guinea!
Looking for a multi-course Papuan meal quickly began to look like I’m heading down the wrong direction and instead I found myself cooking PNGs national dish – Mumu.
What really interested me quite a lot is the stark difference between PNG and Indonesia that they share half of an island with. While Indonesian cuisine, while unique in its own way, resembles other Asian cuisines a lot, Papuan cuisine really does not give me that impression whatsoever. The ethnic groups differ quite a lot as well, wherein Indonesians, while extremely diverse, are majority Javanese and Papuans are vastly Melanesian.
In that sense the cuisines also offer extremely stark contrasts, also since about 80-85% of Papuans live in small communities off subsistence agriculture. This means they produce food to feed their communities, not to trade with others. Still, Papua considers itself to have a national dish, which is as follows:
This week’s menu (2025/08/24): Mumu
Mumu is a simple and delicious dish and you can make it as follows – although it allows for lots of variation! Traditionally it is made over hot coals but since I live in an apartment in the city I made “apartment mumu” – as it is sometimes lovingly referred to by Papuan expats:
Ingredients
- 2 chicken legs
- 3 sweet potatoes
- 2 plantains
- 1 onion
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 bunch greens (kale, spinach, …)
- 1 pineapple sliced
- coconut milk
- salt & pepper
Directions
- Layer your Dutch Oven or large oven-safe pot with Banana leaves, I used two large ones (the pre-frozen ones bend easier), you may want to cut off the stem in the middle of the leaf for easy folding.
- Toss in chunks of sweet potatoes, yams, plantains, bananas, potatoes – at your preference! I used 3 medium sweet potatoes and two plantains. Leave them in large-ish chunks.
- On top of this layer, put a layer of meat – most commonly a mix of pork and chicken. I used chicken thighs, since we try to eat less pork in this house.
- I put salt and pepper at this stage.
- Then put on aromatics – I used yellow onion and garlic, chopped.
- I then layered it with chunks of pineapple and leafy greens – use whatever you have, collards, kale, spinach, …
- Then you wanna evenly pour about a cup of coconut cream over top.
- Lastly you wrap it tightly in the banana leaf, toss on the lid and into the oven it goes at 180 for two hours.
Notes
Feel free to customize this recipe according to your preference. Many people add both pork & chicken, pineapple seems to be optional as well. Honestly as long as you follow the basic rule of pot -> banana leaves -> root veggies -> meat -> veggies -> coconut milk over top, you’re good.
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Enjoy!
To sum it up:
What a treat! Trying new food is always great and this one was both easy and economical. Which was perfect since I was recovering from a cold and our old lady puppy had to get surgery which was priceyyyy.
This is one you can definitely make at home – hope you like it and as always stay tuned for where the w2p balloon lands next! š
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