Hangi advice please.

[Stew]

Right then chaps and chapesses,

Quite a specific menu for a hangi / pit oven and just wanted to get some thoughts / advice on pit size and how long to burn the fire for.

- Whole shoulder of lamb rubbed in rosemary & mint
- 4 x crowns of chicken rubbed in garlic & harissa
- pork belly wrapped around cored apples & marinated in cider
- whole bacon joint but cut in half, rubbed in five spice
- Whole sweet potatoes, carrots, daikon radish, appleas & pears

I'm drooling at the thought of it but it needs to actually happen first!!

We're looking at about 4.5 hours cooking time, I think.

Can I make the pit too big? Is it better to err that side of things rather than under doing it?

 

[Tony]

lay it all out and get a rough size of how much space it's going to take and dig out a little bigger so you can move around in there, you need to make sure that the veg cooks and that usually cooks slower than the meat so on the bottom? You need enough burn time and heat to heat up the surrounding sides and heat all teh rocks you use, the more rocks the better but put a layer between the rocks and the stuff you're cooking or they could scorch the food.

If the pit is too big you'll end up using a lot of fuel and rocks and digging a lot of stuff back out again.

A nice bit of cotton or some such is good to keep the dirt off the food even if you've wrapped it. make sure you've got good gloves etc because it's going to be hot getting stuff out and even digging the stuff out will be hard work, you've got a lot of food going in there

 

[Stew]

Is it best to go wide and shallower or narrower but deeper?

Or a bit of both.