On 7/23/2015 3:08 PM, S Viemeister wrote:
> On 7/23/2015 8:28 PM, dsi1 wrote:
>> On 7/23/2015 10:25 AM, S Viemeister wrote:
>>> On 7/23/2015 4:14 PM, dsi1 wrote:
>>>
>>>> Taro has so much calcium oxalate shards in it that it's inedible
>>>> unless you boil the corm and the leaves for quite a while. Beats the
>>>> heck out of me how the old Hawaiians prepared taro for poi because
>>>> they didn't have pots to boil taro.
>>>>
>>> Tightly woven basket or wooden container filled with water, heated by
>>> dropping red-hot stones into the water.
>>
>> That's just crazy enough to work, professor!
>
> Try it some time - it _does_ work!

It's not likely that I'd try it since I don't have a watertight basket
or red-hot rocks. I suspect that the Hawaiians didn't do it that way
either because you lose a lot of heat in the air and it's tough to boil
very much taro using that method.

My guess is that they steamed taro in an imu. They dug a big hole and
heated the rock in the pit. They then covered that with banana leaves
and dumped in the taro and covered that up with more leaves and then
covered that with dirt. In this way, they could cook up a large batch at
one time. They probably didn't prepare taro every day so the poi
probably sat between batches and fermented. Even today, people tend to
let their poi ferment for a couple of days to get a little sour and
tastier.