Boil up

For the dish of Belize, see Bile up.

Boil up

Boil up
Alternative names	Pork and puha
Type	Soup
Place of origin	New Zealand
Main ingredients	Stock, meat, starchy vegetables, leafy vegetables, dumplings

Boil up is a traditional Māori food from New Zealand.^[1][2][3][4]

Boil-up traditionally is a broth/soup made from a balanced combination of meat and bones (e.g. pork), with greens such as pūhā, watercress or cabbage, and kūmara or potatoes, boiled together, along with flour dumplings known as "doughboys".^[5][6]

Origins

In Polynesian cuisine, food was boiled in wooden bowls into which a red-hot stone was dropped. This was sufficient for heating liquids and pastes, but was insufficient to cook taro or pork; those foods were usually baked in an earth oven.^[7] The Māori carried these traditions to Aotearoa (New Zealand), making puddings of grated kūmara (called roroi) or mashed kiekie flower bracts in large wooden bowls.^[7]

When European settlers arrived they brought with them new foods and iron cooking pots. Pigs and potatoes from Europe were rapidly adopted by Māori, who produced large quantities for trading with the settlers. As settler housing did not have the built-in coal ranges and ovens of Regency Britain, most cooking was done on a hearth, in a cast-iron three-legged cauldron or camp oven.^[8] Camp ovens were imported in their hundreds from the 1850s, and were popular with Māori: they could be transported by waka or carried, and could stand on three feet in the embers or be hung by a chain. Camp ovens were used for making flour-and-sugar puddings, baking traditional rēwena bread, and for the first pork-and-potato boil ups.^[8]

References

1. Elaine C. Rush, Elvina Hsi, Lynnette R. Ferguson, Margaret H. Williams and David Simmons (2010). "Traditional foods reported by a Māori community in 2004". MAI Review & MAI Journal: 5.
2. JESSOP, MAIA (2009). "Te Whakatuwheratanga: Saturday 13 May 2006". Journal of Museum Ethnography (21): 89–102. ISSN 0954-7169. JSTOR 41505539.
3. King, Pita; Hodgetts, Darrin; Rua, Mohi; Morgan, Mandy (2018). "When the Marae Moves into the City: Being Māori in Urban Palmerston North". City & Community. 17 (4): 1189–1208. doi:10.1111/cico.12355. ISSN 1540-6040. S2CID 149982875.
4. Dunn, Kirsty (1 January 2019). "Kaimangatanga: Maori Perspectives on Veganism and Plant-based Kai". Animal Studies Journal. 8 (1): 42–65. ISSN 2201-3008. Archived from the original on 3 March 2022. Retrieved 26 April 2020.
5. Baker, J.; Scragg, R.; Metcalf, P.; Dryson, E. (1993). "Diabetes Mellitus and Employment: Is there Discrimination in the Workplace?". Diabetic Medicine. 10 (4): 362–365. doi:10.1111/j.1464-5491.1993.tb00081.x. PMID 8508622. S2CID 43113330.
6. Harris, Aroha (October 2008). "Concurrent Narratives of Maori and Integration in the 1950s and 60s". Journal of New Zealand Studies (6/7): 139–155. Archived from the original on 2 October 2022. Retrieved 26 April 2020.
7. Leach, Helen M. (2010). "Maori cookery before Cook". In Leach, Helen M. (ed.). From Kai to Kiwi Kitchen. Dunedin: Otago University Press. pp. 19, 23–24. ISBN 9781877372759.
8. Leach, Helen M. (2010). "Cookery in the colonial era (1769–1869)". In Leach, Helen M. (ed.). From Kai to Kiwi Kitchen. Dunedin: Otago University Press. pp. 35–28. ISBN 9781877372759.