January 21, 2025 • 32 mins
Is cooking and preserving your food underground the hottest new culinary trend?! Probably not. But it is fascinating! From mummified victuals to Appalachian cabbage, bean hole suppers to Peruvian pachamancas, Will and Mango dig into a world of underground cuisines.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio. Guess what Will? What's that mango? Do you
know what a food mummy is?
Speaker 2 (00:15):
You mean, like yummy mummy, the character who hangs out
with Count Chocolate.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
I mean, that's a pretty good guess. But food mummies
or victual mummies are ancient meals that have been found
preserved in tombs alongside Egyptian pharaohs and their families. Like
ancient meals, so like mummified wheat and figs.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
What are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (00:34):
So for plant based foods like grains, fruits, and honey,
the Egyptians packed them into baskets or ceramic jars, and
while remnants of those foods have been found in tombs,
most of the perishable food decomposed a long long time ago.
But this was completely different for meat and poultry preserved
for the afterlife. Every cut of beef for gamebird was
given the same mummification process that was used on human
(00:56):
royals and their animal pets. So first the foods were
slowly dry with salt, and then they were wrapped in
strips of linens and coated with the mixture of resins
to keep out moisture and prevent decomposition. And lastly, the
mummified meats were packed into little wooden sarcopha guys, some
of which were even carved into the shape of their contents,
so you might find a leg of veal or a
shoulder of antelope in something shaped like that. I have
(01:19):
to ask, like, what was the goal with all of this? Well,
as I'm sure you know, the whole point of human
mummification was to prepare the body for the afterlife, So
you know, it's so that a person's soul could recognize
the body and continue using it forever. But the Egyptians
also applied the same principle to whatever else a person
was late to rest with. So if you buried someone
with a bunch of treasure, then they would have an
(01:41):
endless supply of wealth to spend in the afterlife. And
if you bury them with their favorite foods, they would
have something delicious to nibble on for all of eternity.
So I guess in their minds they were kind of
stalking the pharaoh's eternal pantry with all his favorite goodies exactly.
And because of that practice, archaeologists are now digging up
four thousand years old cuts of beef, many of which
(02:02):
look surprisingly good for their age.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Wait, could somebody actually still eat one of those meat mummies?
Mummified beef should technically still be edible, but so far,
no one's had the chance or maybe the courage, to
try it. Right, those kinds of food artifacts are kept
almost exclusively in climate control display cases at museums and
research centers, where guests are pretty strongly encouraged to look
(02:25):
but not taste. The other thing is that, like if
the Egyptians were right, eating that old beef could make
the pharaoh's ghost meat disappear from his table mid dinner party,
and who would want to do that? But the good
news is that the ancient Egyptians weren't the only ones
to discover the wonders of underground food storage. Cultures around
the world have been preserving, curing, and even cooking foods
(02:46):
beneath the soil, and many of those techniques are still
in use today, from bog butter to Peruvian barbecue, and
today's episode is all about shining a light on those
buried food traditions. So grab your shovels and four and
get ready to chow down on the best underground cuisines. Hey,
(03:25):
their podcast listeners, Welcome to part time Genius. I'm Will
Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend
mangesh Hot Ticketer. And on the other side of that
soundproof glass, just chomping his way through a smorgash board
of freshly dug root vegetables. That's our friend and producer
Dylan fag And now, as always, he goes above and
beyond with these things, because he's not only got the
spread with carrots and beets and sweet potatoes. I think
(03:47):
I see a few radishes in there.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I'm pretty proud of him.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Well, and is that a turnip for a rootabaga?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
That's an onion mango, So brush up on your veggies.
But I think you just wanted to say the word Rudebagah.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Pretty sure that's what's got it in twice.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
But let's talk a little bit about the practice of
burying food, which of course started as a way to
keep it from spoiling. According to the National Center for
Home Food Preservation, the earliest technique for preserving food was
most likely drying it in the sun. That's a process
that's thought to have been developed by accident during the
stone age.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Oh, I can definitely see that. Like some guy forgets
about the mammet steaks he left out on his rock yep,
he comes back the next day, he finds him dried
out and decides to eat him anyway.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
I mean, that is kind of exactly what would have happened,
And it's easy to imagine that our ancestors and colder
climates may have stumbled upon the freezing.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Method in much the same way.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
So somebody forgets about a stash of food, finds it
in the debt of winter, thaws it out, and finds
that it still tastes just as good as it was
when it was fresh. And so basically there were discoveries
of culinary carelessness. So some random Neanderthals were bad at
resource management and desperate enough to eat something that might
have killed them. But without those mistakes, there's a strong
(04:56):
chance that human civilization wouldn't exist today.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
That's the ability to preserve food through winter allowed humans
to plant roots and form communities instead of just endlessly
roaming from place to place in search of food.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
That's right, and the reason why things like drying food
in the sun or burying them in the ground and
freezing temperatures is so effective is that they both slow
down microbial growth. Thanks to microbes in the air, food
begins to spoil as soon as it's harvested, but those
microorganisms require moisture to carry out their cellular functions, and
so without that they'll either die or go dormant. So
(05:29):
whether you evaporate the moisture by drying the food in
the sun or turn it into ice by freezing food underground,
the process wipes out the microbes and slows down that
process of decay.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
So I am curious though, what about food that's buried
in non freezing temperatures like it still contains moisture, So
wouldn't it spoil just as fast as food above ground.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Well it's not just about temperature control.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
That's a big part of it, but there are other
environmental factors that are at play too, namely.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Light and oxygen.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Those can trigger natural reactions between air and food molecules
that hasten decomposition. But when food is buried underground, the
exposure to air and light is much less of an issue. Additionally,
if the soil is dry and salty, that can also
help reduce the food's moisture level. Even if the ground
isn't cold enough to freeze.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
That's really interesting. I do want to mention, though, that
under certain conditions, it is possible to preserve food underground
in a cool, moist environment, and the best example for
that that I can think of is something called bog butter.
Bog butter, I'm just.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Like saying it.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
I'm so curious about this because I've definitely heard of
bog bodies, which are those super old preserved corpses that
people keep finding in European peat bogs, but I don't
know how much about this bog butter.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Weirdly, bog bodies and bog butter are both created for
the same natural process, so for anyone I'm familiar at,
bog is a shallow kind of wetland where the ground
is composed of all this soft, spongy material called peat. Now,
peat is formed by the partial decomposition of moss and
other plant matter, and it's that abundance of rotting vegetation
(07:05):
that gives bogs their preservative power. They become so clogged
with peate that water can't flow in and out easily,
and that results in extremely low oxygen levels. On top
of that, the decomposition process makes the bogs highly acidic,
and because most bogs form in cold temperate climates, peat
bogs also have the preserving power of cool temperatures, and
(07:26):
these factors combined to create a unique environment that's good
for preserving things, which is how we wound up with
those perfectly preserved human bodies that you mentioned, most of
which were laid to rest way back in the Iron Age.
Actually it's like nearly three thousand years ago, and it's
also wide. People in Scotland and Ireland keep finding giant
wads of butter from around the same era.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Wait, I am curious about this, Like, so is bog
butter actual butter?
Speaker 1 (07:50):
It is actual ancient butter.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Yeah. Some specimens are from as recent as the sixteen hundreds,
but most are much older, from as far back as
six hundred BCE. Now, over the last decade or so,
bog workers in the UK have stumbled across hundreds of
examples of bog butter. These slimy chunks of yellowish dairy
that are typically found wrapped in animal skins or inside
(08:14):
wooden crates even and they range and weight from about
fifteen pounds to well over one hundred pounds of this stuff.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Wow, that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
So why were people dumping so much butter in their bogs?
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Like, if they were, I just want to say that, But.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
If they were wrapping it up, they must have wanted
to come back for it, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
So historian instinct that locals were using the bog as
a natural refrigerator, and the custom clearly persisted for thousands
of years. And along the way, it seems that more
than a few people just kind of lost track of
their butter stash. I never found it again, So tryptocurrency
event happened.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Sometimes you just lose your butter, you know, and their
losses are gain I guess, but I can't imagine a
chunk of old, rancid butter is worth that much to
anyone at this point.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Yeah. So what's interesting is that, according to nat Gio,
and this is what I was kind of hinting at,
people in the area actually treated butter as a substitute
for cash, using it to barter or even pay their taxes.
So not only was the bog this big like communal refrigerator,
it was also people's savings accounts, which means that you know,
misplacing your butter was every bit as much a financial
(09:15):
loss as it was a culinary one.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
I do love butter. I sort of get it at
the same time.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Actually, a question for you, do you leave your butter
out on the counter or do you keep your butter
on the refrigerator. I leave it on the counter, man,
it's so good, just the way to do it. I
have no idea whether it's the right thing to do,
but it's definitely taste here. All right, We've got much
more buried food to uncover. But before we do that,
let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
You're listening to Part Time Genius and we're talking about
the many hidden benefits of burying your food. Okay, Well,
so we've looked at food burial as this really just
right and as a preservation method and kind of a bank.
But where do you want to go next.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
With all this talk about microorganisms and temperature control. I
can't help but think about fermentation, which is a very
different approach to buried food preservation than what we've talked
about so far.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah, So, so tell me a little bit about this.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
All right.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Well, instead of trying to eliminate the microbes in a food,
fermentation does the opposite. It spurs the growth of certain
bacteria and yeast and causes them to produce lactic acid,
which in turn alters the flavors and textures of the food.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
And that's also what helps preserve.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
These foods, right, that's exactly right. So all the lactic
acid from fermentation prevents the growth of harmful bacteria, effectively
preserving the food for longer. And because it's the acidic
environment that makes this kind of preservation possible, you can
ferment foods in hot or cold weather. In fact, Korea
and kimchi was traditionally made in the colder months so
families would have access to vegetables throughout the winter. Large
(10:55):
batches were prepared in ceramic pots and then buried in
the ground to slowly ferment had a more steady temperature.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
So in a way, fermentation was kind of the next
step in the evolution of varied cuisine because not only
are you preserving food underground, now you're preparing it too.
And the thing you put in the ground isn't the
same as what you dig up, right, Like, there's a
real change there. The look, the taste, the texture, it's
all completely different.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Yeah, and traditional kimchi isn't the only example of a
food that's forever changed by its time underground. For instance,
in Greenland, the native people's prepare a dish called kiviak
and that involves stuffing a seal skin with hundreds of
tiny seabirds and placing it in a hole covered with
rocks to ferment for eighteen months.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Have you ever made this before.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
It's just it's just a seal skin and then hundreds
of tiny birds and eighteen months later.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
I've tried it with like twenty or thirty birds, but
has a lot of birds no, I mean, I've heard
of it, but it's not appeeling to me.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
It's basically like a seal turducan, right kind of, but
unlike the tur ducan, you don't consume the outer layer,
only what's inside of it. And another important differences that
the dead birds in kivak actually get stuffed into the
cavity with all their feathers and their beaks still attach.
Then you have to coat the whole thing with oils
to ward off maggots and bury it seam side up
(12:14):
so that any gases can vent through the rocks there.
It sounds like a sort of a growth process.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Yeah, so the starting evolved and you said they buried
this thing for like over a year.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Technically you can dig it up after just three months.
But if you want those beaks to get good and gelatinous,
you definitely don't want an aldentate beak like you gotta
wait a little bit longer, so be patient. But the
goal in any case is to have it ready for
Christmas time, when kivak is eaten as part of a
traditional holiday feast. Now, understandably, many families choose to enjoy
(12:47):
this winter delicacy outdoors to keep its powerful smell from
lingering in the house. And this can linger for weeks afterward.
And if you're wondering what the dish tastes like but
would rather not try for yourself, a BBC producer named
Bethan Evans once described it as a cross between licorice
and the strongest cheese I've ever had.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Those are not things I think of pairing together for
together well, so thinking of like other combinations that are
a little bit odd. I feel the same way about gravlocks,
which is another strong smelling Nordic dish that involved buried fermentation.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
And actually that's the salmon dish that Julia Child made
famous isn't it. Yeah, I've seen it on minis before,
but I've never actually realized it was fermented.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Yeah, so that's the thing. The modern take on gradlocks
doesn't involve fermentation or even much of a burial. Instead,
the salmon is just buried in a dry rub of salt,
sugar and dill, and then it's cured in a refrigerator
for a few days. But that is very different from
how Swedish fishermen first prepared the dish, and this goes
way back to the Middle Ages. They'd been looking for
(13:50):
a way to preserve their summer catch without the use
of salt, which at the time was very expensive, and
this led to the development of a technique called gravlocks,
which literally means buried salmon.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
You know, it's actually just occurring to me right now.
That grave is right there in.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
The word, yeah, and true to the name. Peasants and
fishermen would wrap the fish in birch bark and then
bury it in a wet, sandy grave, and the cold moisture,
the lack of oxygen, and the acidity from the birch bark,
all of that would cause the salmon to ferment instead
of robbing.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
It does feel like such a risky way to ferment,
something like there's no air tight container and your only
defense against spoilage are a few strips of birch bark,
Like I'm surprised people didn't get sick from eating it.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
People absolutely did, and if you even died from it.
The dish is considered a delicacy today, but in its
original form, eating gravlocks was an act of true desperation,
and no matter how horribly it smelled or how iffy
it tasted, the chance to not starve was It was
kind of worth the gamble.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
That makes sense, all right.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Well, now that we've covered the aromatic delights of animal fermentation,
I've got another resourceful buried food tradition for you, and
this one's actually vegetarian. So, according to an old piece
of Appalachian wisdom, if you bury heads of cabbage upside
down in the dirt, they'll stay crisp and crunchy all
winter long. The mountaineers discovered the trick over a century ago,
(15:12):
and many families in the regions still swear by it today.
They claim that buried cabbage is more flavorful than its
top side cousin. Wait, so these cabbages aren't fermented or
seasoned or anything. They're just like pulled from the garden
and then plopped back into the ground, just upside down,
pretty straightforward. And that's not to say that there was
nothing clever about the process. I mean, the leafy greenheads
have been a staple crop for mountaineers since the Blue
(15:34):
Ridge area was first settled, and in the days before refrigeration,
a homesteader's best bet for storing their cabbages through the
winter was by digging and framing out a root cellar
somewhere along the way, though enterprising families realized they could
skip that step by simply sticking their cabbages in the dirt. Now,
the preferred method, known locally as holing it up, was
(15:55):
to dig out a shallow trench just below the frost
line and then place the cabbages in it upside down,
so that the dirt wouldn't get in the leaves once
the hole was filled in if you think about the
direction of the leaves, and so those underground stores of
cabbage could be tapped into as needed throughout the season,
adding a welcome crunch of texture to the families. Otherwise
mushy meals of you think about things like canned beans
(16:18):
and corn pudding and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
So I know you can do a lot of things
with cabbage, like you can saute, fry it up, chop
it into a slab. But did mountaineers try burying anything
besides cabbage, because that seems like it's a technique that
would work for other foods pretty well as well.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
So they did experiment with bearing other kinds of vegetables,
but without added preservatives, most of them just rotted after
a few days. Underground cabbage proved the exception. Because of
the plant's tough outer leaves, that protective layer would gradually
dry out, but the plant's inner core could remain crisp
and fresh. In fact, proponents of buried cabbage claim the
process concentrates all the flavor in those inner leaves that
(16:56):
makes the plant taste much sweeter.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
That sounds delicious actually, And you said this is something
people still do in the Appellations, Yeah, I mean most residents.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Don't see the point now, and it's just about everyone
has a refrigerator. But that said, there are still some
old timers and diehard cabbage fans out there who.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Are still holding it up.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Like the good old that's fascinating. Okay, well, we've got
a whole lot more to cover, but before that, let's
take a quick break.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
All right.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Well, so no offense to our listeners in the blue ridge,
but raw cabbage is just about the most low effort
buried food I can think of, right, Like, it is
so simple to do, and I thought we could head
north and talk about one that requires just a little
bit more elbow grease. It's an old New England specialty
called a bean hole supper. Have you actually heard of this?
Speaker 2 (17:53):
No?
Speaker 3 (17:53):
I have not.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
This is something that our friend Mary turned me on too.
She's a Native maner and she says it's one of
her favorite summer traditions. Let's get into it. Tell me
about it. So the cooking itself is not too complicated,
but it does take a fair amount of prep. First,
you have to get your beans ready by soaking and
par boiling them. Then you add all your fixens like pork, onions,
dry mustard, molasses as well. The next step is where
(18:17):
things start to get interesting. You go outside and you
dig a hole a few feet deep, and then you
start a fire at the bottom and you keep it
burning till you have a nice bed of coals. You
need something that's about eight inches thick. Next, you lower
your sealed pot of beans into the hole and line
the walls with rocks to keep the heat in. And
then you fill in the hole with soil and let
the beans cook for a good long while, generally overnight.
(18:39):
And at that point there's really nothing to do but
wait till morning. Then you dig up the pot hoist
it out of the hole, which is usually a two
person job, and then you help yourself to some warm
beanie goodness.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Wait, so are these breakfast beans? I thought this was
a bean hole supper.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Well, it's really up to the people with the shovels.
Some people cook the beans all day, eat them at night,
and then reheat the leftovers for breakfast. Others tuck in
first thing in the morning and then go back for
seconds at dinner time. We're talking mass quantities of beans here,
like they're actually like about nine or ten pounds of
beans per pot, So most people will make a few
meals out of it regardless of when they start eating.
(19:14):
And not to mention, the bean whole supper is really
a communal event. You might wind up burying a dozen
pots or more depending on the size of your guest list.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
That's a lot of beans. And it does make me
wonder though, like why beans this is main?
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Right? So it feels like you should have a.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Clam bake or cook a bunch of lobsters underground instead.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Part of it just comes down to price, right, Like
one hundred and fifty pounds of beans versus one hundred
and fifty pounds of lobster. Beans are called a different price,
two different prices. Beans are called the poor men's meat
for a reason. Plus they have a much longer shelf
life than clams or lobsters. But there are still other
cheap foods that you can bury besides beans, Like they
must have picked them for a reason. Yeah, I mean,
(19:54):
beans really are ubiquitous in New England. Boston's nickname is
the bean Town for a reason. But probably the biggest
reason why maners still do this is that it's like
this long, rich history of the custom right. According to
the Main Folk Life Center, the bean hole method of
cooking was first developed by Native American tribes living along
(20:14):
the East coast. They would fill clay pots with beans,
bear grease, and maple syrup, and then they'd cover it
with deer skins and bury them in coals underground. Now
European settlers in Maine adopted the bean hole from the
Abenaki tribe, and the long, slow cooking style proved especially
useful in the regions many lumber camps. Beans were cheap
(20:35):
and plentiful and obviously a good source of protein, and
they could be easily prepared in large batches. And while
the equipment and camp kitchens was pretty bare bones at
the time, the cooks had everything they needed to make
a bean hole supper, which is really just cast iron pots,
plenty of rocks and wood, and lots of open land
for digging. I'm curious, though, do we know what kinds
(20:56):
of beans these guys were eating. I guess there's a
certain kind that's traditionally used in these bean holes. From
what I read, most maners stick to heirloom beans, which
are the types that were common during the colonial era.
But whichever beans you use, you'll want to make sure
you've got plenty of brown bread and onions on hand
to go with the leftovers. And that's because the traditional
next day meal after a bean hole supper is a
(21:18):
sandwich of cold beans and raw onions on brown bread.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Wait, cold beans?
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Why why wouldn't you just reheat them?
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Because then you have to dig another hole. I guys,
but it's not practical. You know. That actually reminds me.
Gabe came across a nineteenth century folk song this week
about life at the lumber camps, and one of the
stanzas made me think that the cooks may have relied
on bean hole suppers just a little too much in
some cases. This song is called the Good Old State
of Maine, and the outlines how much worse the conditions
(21:46):
were at New Hampshire's lumber camps compared to those of Maine,
including the lack of variety on the menu. Now we
found this recording sung by James Brown, not the James Brown.
We all know a different Games Brown, and I want
to play a clip of it, so let's late it.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
Now. Twas bread and beans and beans, and bread and
bread and beans again for a grub. We sometimes had
it change in the good all day domain.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Oh that is great, and leave it up to Gabe
for find a gem like this. It kind of reminds
me that Monty Python sketch, where every dish on the
menu consists partially or entirely of spam, Like there's just
no escaping.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
It exactly, beans all around all right.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Well, I read about this other pit cooking tradition from
Peru and it's called pacha manca.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
The name means earthpot.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
In the indigenous Ketchua language, and it refers to a
style of cooking that's thought to be more than eight
thousand years old. It's basically Peru's answer to barbecue, but
instead of using a grill, you bury the food and
you cook it between rows of hot volcanic rocks.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
That's really cool. And I'm guessing the food in this
case is some kind of meat.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Yeah, I mean that's it's certainly the star of the show.
A traditional spread can include up to four different marinated meats,
with the most common options being chicken, pork, lamb, alpaca,
or guinea pig, the last two of which are local
delicacies that rarely get served to tourists.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
There's a lot more to pacha manka than meat, though.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Other crucial components of the dish include Tomlli's lima beans,
corn potatoes, sweet potatoes, all of which are carefully stacked
in layers according to how long each one needs to cook,
and so how does that work exactly? The first step
is to dig a pit and then start a fire.
Then you add layers of stones, making sure to only
use volcanic ones so that they don't burst from the
(23:32):
high heat. Now, once the rocks are red hot, you
add your first layer of food. This is typically the
potato layer because those take the most time to cook. Now.
Their placement also has the added benefit of absorbing all
the fat drippings from the layer above them, which is
your meat of choice. On top of the meat, you
add another layer of rocks, followed by faster cooking vegetables
and tomali's on the very top. Now, the last step
(23:54):
is to cover it all up, but once again there
is a layering process. So first you pile on some
banana and plantain leaves for flavor, Then you add some
craft paper or fabric to act as a barrier, and
lastly you top it with soil. Now, it can take
as little as fifteen minutes to cook everything, depending on
the heat of your stones, but most pachamanca has cooked
for forty minutes or longer to get everything nice and tender.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
It actually sounds pretty good.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
It sounds delicious, but this obviously, isn't a dinner for
one kind of thing. Is this more communal as well?
Very much so.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Like historically it's a very social experience. So people living
in the Andes Mountains were incredibly isolated from other communities,
so making pachamanca was a reason to get everybody together.
It's the same today too, where you might have pachamanka
to celebrate a special occasion or as part of a
big community event, but you're definitely not going to do
this alone.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
It's interesting because when I think of proving cuisine, I
mostly think about savich, which is so firmly rude in
the culture that it's considered the national dish there. But
what you're describing is exact opposite of a cold cooked
seafood salad.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Yeah, it's like a Maine is better known for lobster
than it is for beanhole suppers. For whatever reason, the
coastal food traditions have just garnered more attention than the
inland ones.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Well, I'm glad we could do this episode to share
the good news of underground cooking. I know a lot
of people got into canning during the pandemic, so who knows,
maybe food burial will be next, you know, like the
next hot food trend. But before we sign off, why
don't we do a quick fact off?
Speaker 3 (25:20):
All right, let's dig in. All right, So we've been
covered some unusual.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Approaches to food preservation today, but I think the strangest
might be the old Russian folk belief that putting a
frog and milk will prevent it from spoiling.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Now that's the milk, not the frog.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
The idea may have stemmed from the fact that frogs
are cold and damped to the touch, which may have
led folks to assume that those qualities could be passed
along to whatever liquid the frog was submerged in. Another
theory is that the belief rose from the practice of
storing milk cans in a stream to keep them cool. Occasionally,
frogs would find their way into these containers, and farmers
would have to assure customers that the milk was still drinkable.
(26:01):
Some of them may have even pretended that the frogs
had been purposefully added due to their supposed preservation power,
which is pretty clever there. In any case, the folklore
about frogs has persisted for centuries, and while few people
in Russia actually believe it, today, just about everyone has
at least heard of it, so you can imagine their
surprise when back in twenty twelve, scientists in Moscow announced
(26:22):
that the belief.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Might not be that far fetched.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Actually, according to the report, many of the peptides found
in the secretions of common frogs contain antibacterial properties. So
while dropping a frog in your milk carton is still
super gross, it turns out the peasants of Old Russia
may have actually been onto something.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
That is incredible. I'd heard about that, but I didn't
know there was any truth to it. Well, heading back underground,
I want to tell you about the world's oldest noodles.
They were unearthed in China back in two thousand and five,
and according to radiocarbon dating, the ancient millet pasta is
about four thousand years old. Now, the discovery suggests that
China was like the birthplace of the noodle, as none
(27:01):
of the specimens found in other countries come anywhere close
to matching that date. And the really crazy thing is
that this act of preservation happened completely by accident. According
to archaeologists, the ancient settlement where the noodles were found
had been wiped out by a sudden catastrophe, and amidst
the wreckage and human remains, the team found an upturned
bowl and when they lifted it, they found a pile
(27:24):
of neolithic noodles waiting for them. So the archaeologist Kambu
Lee explained it this way. It was this unique combination
of factors that created a vacuum or an empty space
between the top of the sentiment cone and the bottom
of this bowl that allowed the noodles to be perfectly preserved.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
It's interesting, actually, I think I have the perfect thing
to pair with the world's oldest noodles, and that's the
world's oldest wine. It was poured into a funeral urn
in Spain more than two thousand years ago and was
rediscovered inside an underground Roman tomb back in twenty nineteen. Now.
The archaeologist who opened the urn found a glass flask
inside containing about five liters of a reddish brown liquid.
(28:04):
Chemical analysis revealed it to be a white sherry type
wine that's still made in the region today, and it
has since been authenticated as the oldest known example of
a wine that still exists in a liquid form. But
for any connoisseurs out there, attempted to give it a taste.
Keep in mind that cremated remains were also found in
the urrns, so you'll just want to maybe, I don't know,
maybe strain it first.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
I don't know. I like my wine chunky style. One
thing I'd have a harder time saying no to is
a freshly pickled pickle from a Fijian pickle pit. Nice. Now,
the pickling process is thought to have version it in
Mesopotamia as far back as twenty four hundred BCE, but
it holds a special importance in the Pacific Islands, where
(28:46):
the warm, humid climate causes food to spoil much faster.
So to get around that problem, native communities began digging
these fermentation pits, which they would line with banana leaves
to keep out the soil. And the pits were especially
helpful in building up food stores to use celebrations or
you know, in case of storms, and over time the
pits became so vital that they even started to play
(29:06):
a role in the courting process. So in Fiji, for example,
building up a well stocked picklepit shows that a man
is a good provider, which is why it's customary for
men to let a woman's parents inspect their picklepit before
they popped the question. It has some good.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Tongue twisters this episode, and it just sounds sturdy mango.
To be honest with you, My last one doesn't involve
a buried food, but it's such a bizarre case.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Of food preservation that I can't not mention it.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
So.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
According to our friends at Alice Obscura, the world's oldest.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Ham was carried one hundred and twenty three years ago
by Gwaltney Foods Meat Company, this in Smithfield, Virginia. Now,
somehow the ham fell by the wayside for two decades
and remained hanging from the rafters of a packing house
until the early nineteen twenties. The head of the company,
a guy named Pembroke Gwaltney Junior, was so thrilled by
the hams rediscovering that he put a brass collar on
(29:58):
it and started calling it his pet.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
You know how you'd normally.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
React to something like this so weird, And that wasn't
all either. So Gwaltny was so proud of the ham
that he took it to public expositions and showed it
off as proof of the preservative powers of his smoking method.
He claimed the company's process was so effective that its
meats could be stored in definitely without refrigeration. Seems he
was right too, because the century old Ham is still
(30:22):
going strong today. It's on permanent display at the Isle
of White County Museum in Virginia, which, by the way,
is also home to the World's Oldest Peanuts.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
These guys have a lot to brag about in that area.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
It's so old.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
And if you can't make the trip in person, don't worry.
You can still keep up with the Ham's Twitter account
at World's Oldest Ham, or you can keep an eye
on it directly through the museum's twenty four to seven
live streamed ham Camp, of course. And in case you're wondering,
according to microbologist, the ham is still technically edible, although
you know it looks like a petrified football.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
At this point.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Well, even though I love the idea of around the
clock Hamcam, the fact that it is in does give
you a little pause here.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
I think that's fair.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
I still wanted to mention it, but I was going
to give you this week's trophy anyway for the pickle pits,
you know, mainly for the tongue twister there because it's
just so much fun to say.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
I love it. Well, that's going to do it for
today's Part Time Genius. If you enjoyed this episode, come
find us on Instagram at part Time Genius or leave
us a review on Apple Podcasts, and either way we'll
be back in your feed real soon with another brand
new episode from Mary Gabe, Dylan, Will and myself. Thank
you so much for listening. Part Time Genius is a
(31:46):
production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by
Will Pearson and me Mongayshtikler and researched by our good
pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced
by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang.
The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvel
(32:06):
and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay,
Trustee Dara Potts and buy Any Shorey. For more podcasts
from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio. Guess what Will? What's that mango? Do you
know what a food mummy is?
Speaker 2 (00:15):
You mean, like yummy mummy, the character who hangs out
with Count Chocolate.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
I mean, that's a pretty good guess. But food mummies
or victual mummies are ancient meals that have been found
preserved in tombs alongside Egyptian pharaohs and their families. Like
ancient meals, so like mummified wheat and figs.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
What are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (00:34):
So for plant based foods like grains, fruits, and honey,
the Egyptians packed them into baskets or ceramic jars, and
while remnants of those foods have been found in tombs,
most of the perishable food decomposed a long long time ago.
But this was completely different for meat and poultry preserved
for the afterlife. Every cut of beef for gamebird was
given the same mummification process that was used on human
(00:56):
royals and their animal pets. So first the foods were
slowly dry with salt, and then they were wrapped in
strips of linens and coated with the mixture of resins
to keep out moisture and prevent decomposition. And lastly, the
mummified meats were packed into little wooden sarcopha guys, some
of which were even carved into the shape of their contents,
so you might find a leg of veal or a
shoulder of antelope in something shaped like that. I have
(01:19):
to ask, like, what was the goal with all of this? Well,
as I'm sure you know, the whole point of human
mummification was to prepare the body for the afterlife, So
you know, it's so that a person's soul could recognize
the body and continue using it forever. But the Egyptians
also applied the same principle to whatever else a person
was late to rest with. So if you buried someone
with a bunch of treasure, then they would have an
(01:41):
endless supply of wealth to spend in the afterlife. And
if you bury them with their favorite foods, they would
have something delicious to nibble on for all of eternity.
So I guess in their minds they were kind of
stalking the pharaoh's eternal pantry with all his favorite goodies exactly.
And because of that practice, archaeologists are now digging up
four thousand years old cuts of beef, many of which
(02:02):
look surprisingly good for their age.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Wait, could somebody actually still eat one of those meat mummies?
Mummified beef should technically still be edible, but so far,
no one's had the chance or maybe the courage, to
try it. Right, those kinds of food artifacts are kept
almost exclusively in climate control display cases at museums and
research centers, where guests are pretty strongly encouraged to look
(02:25):
but not taste. The other thing is that, like if
the Egyptians were right, eating that old beef could make
the pharaoh's ghost meat disappear from his table mid dinner party,
and who would want to do that? But the good
news is that the ancient Egyptians weren't the only ones
to discover the wonders of underground food storage. Cultures around
the world have been preserving, curing, and even cooking foods
(02:46):
beneath the soil, and many of those techniques are still
in use today, from bog butter to Peruvian barbecue, and
today's episode is all about shining a light on those
buried food traditions. So grab your shovels and four and
get ready to chow down on the best underground cuisines. Hey,
(03:25):
their podcast listeners, Welcome to part time Genius. I'm Will
Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend
mangesh Hot Ticketer. And on the other side of that
soundproof glass, just chomping his way through a smorgash board
of freshly dug root vegetables. That's our friend and producer
Dylan fag And now, as always, he goes above and
beyond with these things, because he's not only got the
spread with carrots and beets and sweet potatoes. I think
(03:47):
I see a few radishes in there.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I'm pretty proud of him.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Well, and is that a turnip for a rootabaga?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
That's an onion mango, So brush up on your veggies.
But I think you just wanted to say the word Rudebagah.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Pretty sure that's what's got it in twice.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
But let's talk a little bit about the practice of
burying food, which of course started as a way to
keep it from spoiling. According to the National Center for
Home Food Preservation, the earliest technique for preserving food was
most likely drying it in the sun. That's a process
that's thought to have been developed by accident during the
stone age.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Oh, I can definitely see that. Like some guy forgets
about the mammet steaks he left out on his rock yep,
he comes back the next day, he finds him dried
out and decides to eat him anyway.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
I mean, that is kind of exactly what would have happened,
And it's easy to imagine that our ancestors and colder
climates may have stumbled upon the freezing.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Method in much the same way.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
So somebody forgets about a stash of food, finds it
in the debt of winter, thaws it out, and finds
that it still tastes just as good as it was
when it was fresh. And so basically there were discoveries
of culinary carelessness. So some random Neanderthals were bad at
resource management and desperate enough to eat something that might
have killed them. But without those mistakes, there's a strong
(04:56):
chance that human civilization wouldn't exist today.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
That's the ability to preserve food through winter allowed humans
to plant roots and form communities instead of just endlessly
roaming from place to place in search of food.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
That's right, and the reason why things like drying food
in the sun or burying them in the ground and
freezing temperatures is so effective is that they both slow
down microbial growth. Thanks to microbes in the air, food
begins to spoil as soon as it's harvested, but those
microorganisms require moisture to carry out their cellular functions, and
so without that they'll either die or go dormant. So
(05:29):
whether you evaporate the moisture by drying the food in
the sun or turn it into ice by freezing food underground,
the process wipes out the microbes and slows down that
process of decay.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
So I am curious though, what about food that's buried
in non freezing temperatures like it still contains moisture, So
wouldn't it spoil just as fast as food above ground.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
Well it's not just about temperature control.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
That's a big part of it, but there are other
environmental factors that are at play too, namely.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Light and oxygen.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Those can trigger natural reactions between air and food molecules
that hasten decomposition. But when food is buried underground, the
exposure to air and light is much less of an issue. Additionally,
if the soil is dry and salty, that can also
help reduce the food's moisture level. Even if the ground
isn't cold enough to freeze.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
That's really interesting. I do want to mention, though, that
under certain conditions, it is possible to preserve food underground
in a cool, moist environment, and the best example for
that that I can think of is something called bog butter.
Bog butter, I'm just.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Like saying it.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
I'm so curious about this because I've definitely heard of
bog bodies, which are those super old preserved corpses that
people keep finding in European peat bogs, but I don't
know how much about this bog butter.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Weirdly, bog bodies and bog butter are both created for
the same natural process, so for anyone I'm familiar at,
bog is a shallow kind of wetland where the ground
is composed of all this soft, spongy material called peat. Now,
peat is formed by the partial decomposition of moss and
other plant matter, and it's that abundance of rotting vegetation
(07:05):
that gives bogs their preservative power. They become so clogged
with peate that water can't flow in and out easily,
and that results in extremely low oxygen levels. On top
of that, the decomposition process makes the bogs highly acidic,
and because most bogs form in cold temperate climates, peat
bogs also have the preserving power of cool temperatures, and
(07:26):
these factors combined to create a unique environment that's good
for preserving things, which is how we wound up with
those perfectly preserved human bodies that you mentioned, most of
which were laid to rest way back in the Iron Age.
Actually it's like nearly three thousand years ago, and it's
also wide. People in Scotland and Ireland keep finding giant
wads of butter from around the same era.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Wait, I am curious about this, Like, so is bog
butter actual butter?
Speaker 1 (07:50):
It is actual ancient butter.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Yeah. Some specimens are from as recent as the sixteen hundreds,
but most are much older, from as far back as
six hundred BCE. Now, over the last decade or so,
bog workers in the UK have stumbled across hundreds of
examples of bog butter. These slimy chunks of yellowish dairy
that are typically found wrapped in animal skins or inside
(08:14):
wooden crates even and they range and weight from about
fifteen pounds to well over one hundred pounds of this stuff.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Wow, that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
So why were people dumping so much butter in their bogs?
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Like, if they were, I just want to say that, But.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
If they were wrapping it up, they must have wanted
to come back for it, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
So historian instinct that locals were using the bog as
a natural refrigerator, and the custom clearly persisted for thousands
of years. And along the way, it seems that more
than a few people just kind of lost track of
their butter stash. I never found it again, So tryptocurrency
event happened.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Sometimes you just lose your butter, you know, and their
losses are gain I guess, but I can't imagine a
chunk of old, rancid butter is worth that much to
anyone at this point.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Yeah. So what's interesting is that, according to nat Gio,
and this is what I was kind of hinting at,
people in the area actually treated butter as a substitute
for cash, using it to barter or even pay their taxes.
So not only was the bog this big like communal refrigerator,
it was also people's savings accounts, which means that you know,
misplacing your butter was every bit as much a financial
(09:15):
loss as it was a culinary one.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
I do love butter. I sort of get it at
the same time.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Actually, a question for you, do you leave your butter
out on the counter or do you keep your butter
on the refrigerator. I leave it on the counter, man,
it's so good, just the way to do it. I
have no idea whether it's the right thing to do,
but it's definitely taste here. All right, We've got much
more buried food to uncover. But before we do that,
let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
You're listening to Part Time Genius and we're talking about
the many hidden benefits of burying your food. Okay, Well,
so we've looked at food burial as this really just
right and as a preservation method and kind of a bank.
But where do you want to go next.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
With all this talk about microorganisms and temperature control. I
can't help but think about fermentation, which is a very
different approach to buried food preservation than what we've talked
about so far.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah, So, so tell me a little bit about this.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
All right.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Well, instead of trying to eliminate the microbes in a food,
fermentation does the opposite. It spurs the growth of certain
bacteria and yeast and causes them to produce lactic acid,
which in turn alters the flavors and textures of the food.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
And that's also what helps preserve.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
These foods, right, that's exactly right. So all the lactic
acid from fermentation prevents the growth of harmful bacteria, effectively
preserving the food for longer. And because it's the acidic
environment that makes this kind of preservation possible, you can
ferment foods in hot or cold weather. In fact, Korea
and kimchi was traditionally made in the colder months so
families would have access to vegetables throughout the winter. Large
(10:55):
batches were prepared in ceramic pots and then buried in
the ground to slowly ferment had a more steady temperature.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
So in a way, fermentation was kind of the next
step in the evolution of varied cuisine because not only
are you preserving food underground, now you're preparing it too.
And the thing you put in the ground isn't the
same as what you dig up, right, Like, there's a
real change there. The look, the taste, the texture, it's
all completely different.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Yeah, and traditional kimchi isn't the only example of a
food that's forever changed by its time underground. For instance,
in Greenland, the native people's prepare a dish called kiviak
and that involves stuffing a seal skin with hundreds of
tiny seabirds and placing it in a hole covered with
rocks to ferment for eighteen months.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Have you ever made this before.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
It's just it's just a seal skin and then hundreds
of tiny birds and eighteen months later.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
I've tried it with like twenty or thirty birds, but
has a lot of birds no, I mean, I've heard
of it, but it's not appeeling to me.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
It's basically like a seal turducan, right kind of, but
unlike the tur ducan, you don't consume the outer layer,
only what's inside of it. And another important differences that
the dead birds in kivak actually get stuffed into the
cavity with all their feathers and their beaks still attach.
Then you have to coat the whole thing with oils
to ward off maggots and bury it seam side up
(12:14):
so that any gases can vent through the rocks there.
It sounds like a sort of a growth process.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Yeah, so the starting evolved and you said they buried
this thing for like over a year.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Technically you can dig it up after just three months.
But if you want those beaks to get good and gelatinous,
you definitely don't want an aldentate beak like you gotta
wait a little bit longer, so be patient. But the
goal in any case is to have it ready for
Christmas time, when kivak is eaten as part of a
traditional holiday feast. Now, understandably, many families choose to enjoy
(12:47):
this winter delicacy outdoors to keep its powerful smell from
lingering in the house. And this can linger for weeks afterward.
And if you're wondering what the dish tastes like but
would rather not try for yourself, a BBC producer named
Bethan Evans once described it as a cross between licorice
and the strongest cheese I've ever had.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Those are not things I think of pairing together for
together well, so thinking of like other combinations that are
a little bit odd. I feel the same way about gravlocks,
which is another strong smelling Nordic dish that involved buried fermentation.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
And actually that's the salmon dish that Julia Child made
famous isn't it. Yeah, I've seen it on minis before,
but I've never actually realized it was fermented.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Yeah, so that's the thing. The modern take on gradlocks
doesn't involve fermentation or even much of a burial. Instead,
the salmon is just buried in a dry rub of salt,
sugar and dill, and then it's cured in a refrigerator
for a few days. But that is very different from
how Swedish fishermen first prepared the dish, and this goes
way back to the Middle Ages. They'd been looking for
(13:50):
a way to preserve their summer catch without the use
of salt, which at the time was very expensive, and
this led to the development of a technique called gravlocks,
which literally means buried salmon.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
You know, it's actually just occurring to me right now.
That grave is right there in.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
The word, yeah, and true to the name. Peasants and
fishermen would wrap the fish in birch bark and then
bury it in a wet, sandy grave, and the cold moisture,
the lack of oxygen, and the acidity from the birch bark,
all of that would cause the salmon to ferment instead
of robbing.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
It does feel like such a risky way to ferment,
something like there's no air tight container and your only
defense against spoilage are a few strips of birch bark,
Like I'm surprised people didn't get sick from eating it.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
People absolutely did, and if you even died from it.
The dish is considered a delicacy today, but in its
original form, eating gravlocks was an act of true desperation,
and no matter how horribly it smelled or how iffy
it tasted, the chance to not starve was It was
kind of worth the gamble.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
That makes sense, all right.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Well, now that we've covered the aromatic delights of animal fermentation,
I've got another resourceful buried food tradition for you, and
this one's actually vegetarian. So, according to an old piece
of Appalachian wisdom, if you bury heads of cabbage upside
down in the dirt, they'll stay crisp and crunchy all
winter long. The mountaineers discovered the trick over a century ago,
(15:12):
and many families in the regions still swear by it today.
They claim that buried cabbage is more flavorful than its
top side cousin. Wait, so these cabbages aren't fermented or
seasoned or anything. They're just like pulled from the garden
and then plopped back into the ground, just upside down,
pretty straightforward. And that's not to say that there was
nothing clever about the process. I mean, the leafy greenheads
have been a staple crop for mountaineers since the Blue
(15:34):
Ridge area was first settled, and in the days before refrigeration,
a homesteader's best bet for storing their cabbages through the
winter was by digging and framing out a root cellar
somewhere along the way, though enterprising families realized they could
skip that step by simply sticking their cabbages in the dirt. Now,
the preferred method, known locally as holing it up, was
(15:55):
to dig out a shallow trench just below the frost
line and then place the cabbages in it upside down,
so that the dirt wouldn't get in the leaves once
the hole was filled in if you think about the
direction of the leaves, and so those underground stores of
cabbage could be tapped into as needed throughout the season,
adding a welcome crunch of texture to the families. Otherwise
mushy meals of you think about things like canned beans
(16:18):
and corn pudding and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
So I know you can do a lot of things
with cabbage, like you can saute, fry it up, chop
it into a slab. But did mountaineers try burying anything
besides cabbage, because that seems like it's a technique that
would work for other foods pretty well as well.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
So they did experiment with bearing other kinds of vegetables,
but without added preservatives, most of them just rotted after
a few days. Underground cabbage proved the exception. Because of
the plant's tough outer leaves, that protective layer would gradually
dry out, but the plant's inner core could remain crisp
and fresh. In fact, proponents of buried cabbage claim the
process concentrates all the flavor in those inner leaves that
(16:56):
makes the plant taste much sweeter.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
That sounds delicious actually, And you said this is something
people still do in the Appellations, Yeah, I mean most residents.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Don't see the point now, and it's just about everyone
has a refrigerator. But that said, there are still some
old timers and diehard cabbage fans out there who.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Are still holding it up.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Like the good old that's fascinating. Okay, well, we've got
a whole lot more to cover, but before that, let's
take a quick break.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
All right.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Well, so no offense to our listeners in the blue ridge,
but raw cabbage is just about the most low effort
buried food I can think of, right, Like, it is
so simple to do, and I thought we could head
north and talk about one that requires just a little
bit more elbow grease. It's an old New England specialty
called a bean hole supper. Have you actually heard of this?
Speaker 2 (17:53):
No?
Speaker 3 (17:53):
I have not.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
This is something that our friend Mary turned me on too.
She's a Native maner and she says it's one of
her favorite summer traditions. Let's get into it. Tell me
about it. So the cooking itself is not too complicated,
but it does take a fair amount of prep. First,
you have to get your beans ready by soaking and
par boiling them. Then you add all your fixens like pork, onions,
dry mustard, molasses as well. The next step is where
(18:17):
things start to get interesting. You go outside and you
dig a hole a few feet deep, and then you
start a fire at the bottom and you keep it
burning till you have a nice bed of coals. You
need something that's about eight inches thick. Next, you lower
your sealed pot of beans into the hole and line
the walls with rocks to keep the heat in. And
then you fill in the hole with soil and let
the beans cook for a good long while, generally overnight.
(18:39):
And at that point there's really nothing to do but
wait till morning. Then you dig up the pot hoist
it out of the hole, which is usually a two
person job, and then you help yourself to some warm
beanie goodness.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Wait, so are these breakfast beans? I thought this was
a bean hole supper.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Well, it's really up to the people with the shovels.
Some people cook the beans all day, eat them at night,
and then reheat the leftovers for breakfast. Others tuck in
first thing in the morning and then go back for
seconds at dinner time. We're talking mass quantities of beans here,
like they're actually like about nine or ten pounds of
beans per pot, So most people will make a few
meals out of it regardless of when they start eating.
(19:14):
And not to mention, the bean whole supper is really
a communal event. You might wind up burying a dozen
pots or more depending on the size of your guest list.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
That's a lot of beans. And it does make me
wonder though, like why beans this is main?
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Right? So it feels like you should have a.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Clam bake or cook a bunch of lobsters underground instead.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Part of it just comes down to price, right, Like
one hundred and fifty pounds of beans versus one hundred
and fifty pounds of lobster. Beans are called a different price,
two different prices. Beans are called the poor men's meat
for a reason. Plus they have a much longer shelf
life than clams or lobsters. But there are still other
cheap foods that you can bury besides beans, Like they
must have picked them for a reason. Yeah, I mean,
(19:54):
beans really are ubiquitous in New England. Boston's nickname is
the bean Town for a reason. But probably the biggest
reason why maners still do this is that it's like
this long, rich history of the custom right. According to
the Main Folk Life Center, the bean hole method of
cooking was first developed by Native American tribes living along
(20:14):
the East coast. They would fill clay pots with beans,
bear grease, and maple syrup, and then they'd cover it
with deer skins and bury them in coals underground. Now
European settlers in Maine adopted the bean hole from the
Abenaki tribe, and the long, slow cooking style proved especially
useful in the regions many lumber camps. Beans were cheap
(20:35):
and plentiful and obviously a good source of protein, and
they could be easily prepared in large batches. And while
the equipment and camp kitchens was pretty bare bones at
the time, the cooks had everything they needed to make
a bean hole supper, which is really just cast iron pots,
plenty of rocks and wood, and lots of open land
for digging. I'm curious, though, do we know what kinds
(20:56):
of beans these guys were eating. I guess there's a
certain kind that's traditionally used in these bean holes. From
what I read, most maners stick to heirloom beans, which
are the types that were common during the colonial era.
But whichever beans you use, you'll want to make sure
you've got plenty of brown bread and onions on hand
to go with the leftovers. And that's because the traditional
next day meal after a bean hole supper is a
(21:18):
sandwich of cold beans and raw onions on brown bread.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Wait, cold beans?
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Why why wouldn't you just reheat them?
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Because then you have to dig another hole. I guys,
but it's not practical. You know. That actually reminds me.
Gabe came across a nineteenth century folk song this week
about life at the lumber camps, and one of the
stanzas made me think that the cooks may have relied
on bean hole suppers just a little too much in
some cases. This song is called the Good Old State
of Maine, and the outlines how much worse the conditions
(21:46):
were at New Hampshire's lumber camps compared to those of Maine,
including the lack of variety on the menu. Now we
found this recording sung by James Brown, not the James Brown.
We all know a different Games Brown, and I want
to play a clip of it, so let's late it.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
Now. Twas bread and beans and beans, and bread and
bread and beans again for a grub. We sometimes had
it change in the good all day domain.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Oh that is great, and leave it up to Gabe
for find a gem like this. It kind of reminds
me that Monty Python sketch, where every dish on the
menu consists partially or entirely of spam, Like there's just
no escaping.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
It exactly, beans all around all right.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Well, I read about this other pit cooking tradition from
Peru and it's called pacha manca.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
The name means earthpot.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
In the indigenous Ketchua language, and it refers to a
style of cooking that's thought to be more than eight
thousand years old. It's basically Peru's answer to barbecue, but
instead of using a grill, you bury the food and
you cook it between rows of hot volcanic rocks.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
That's really cool. And I'm guessing the food in this
case is some kind of meat.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Yeah, I mean that's it's certainly the star of the show.
A traditional spread can include up to four different marinated meats,
with the most common options being chicken, pork, lamb, alpaca,
or guinea pig, the last two of which are local
delicacies that rarely get served to tourists.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
There's a lot more to pacha manka than meat, though.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Other crucial components of the dish include Tomlli's lima beans,
corn potatoes, sweet potatoes, all of which are carefully stacked
in layers according to how long each one needs to cook,
and so how does that work exactly? The first step
is to dig a pit and then start a fire.
Then you add layers of stones, making sure to only
use volcanic ones so that they don't burst from the
(23:32):
high heat. Now, once the rocks are red hot, you
add your first layer of food. This is typically the
potato layer because those take the most time to cook. Now.
Their placement also has the added benefit of absorbing all
the fat drippings from the layer above them, which is
your meat of choice. On top of the meat, you
add another layer of rocks, followed by faster cooking vegetables
and tomali's on the very top. Now, the last step
(23:54):
is to cover it all up, but once again there
is a layering process. So first you pile on some
banana and plantain leaves for flavor, Then you add some
craft paper or fabric to act as a barrier, and
lastly you top it with soil. Now, it can take
as little as fifteen minutes to cook everything, depending on
the heat of your stones, but most pachamanca has cooked
for forty minutes or longer to get everything nice and tender.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
It actually sounds pretty good.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
It sounds delicious, but this obviously, isn't a dinner for
one kind of thing. Is this more communal as well?
Very much so.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Like historically it's a very social experience. So people living
in the Andes Mountains were incredibly isolated from other communities,
so making pachamanca was a reason to get everybody together.
It's the same today too, where you might have pachamanka
to celebrate a special occasion or as part of a
big community event, but you're definitely not going to do
this alone.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
It's interesting because when I think of proving cuisine, I
mostly think about savich, which is so firmly rude in
the culture that it's considered the national dish there. But
what you're describing is exact opposite of a cold cooked
seafood salad.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Yeah, it's like a Maine is better known for lobster
than it is for beanhole suppers. For whatever reason, the
coastal food traditions have just garnered more attention than the
inland ones.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Well, I'm glad we could do this episode to share
the good news of underground cooking. I know a lot
of people got into canning during the pandemic, so who knows,
maybe food burial will be next, you know, like the
next hot food trend. But before we sign off, why
don't we do a quick fact off?
Speaker 3 (25:20):
All right, let's dig in. All right, So we've been
covered some unusual.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Approaches to food preservation today, but I think the strangest
might be the old Russian folk belief that putting a
frog and milk will prevent it from spoiling.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Now that's the milk, not the frog.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
The idea may have stemmed from the fact that frogs
are cold and damped to the touch, which may have
led folks to assume that those qualities could be passed
along to whatever liquid the frog was submerged in. Another
theory is that the belief rose from the practice of
storing milk cans in a stream to keep them cool. Occasionally,
frogs would find their way into these containers, and farmers
would have to assure customers that the milk was still drinkable.
(26:01):
Some of them may have even pretended that the frogs
had been purposefully added due to their supposed preservation power,
which is pretty clever there. In any case, the folklore
about frogs has persisted for centuries, and while few people
in Russia actually believe it, today, just about everyone has
at least heard of it, so you can imagine their
surprise when back in twenty twelve, scientists in Moscow announced
(26:22):
that the belief.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
Might not be that far fetched.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Actually, according to the report, many of the peptides found
in the secretions of common frogs contain antibacterial properties. So
while dropping a frog in your milk carton is still
super gross, it turns out the peasants of Old Russia
may have actually been onto something.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
That is incredible. I'd heard about that, but I didn't
know there was any truth to it. Well, heading back underground,
I want to tell you about the world's oldest noodles.
They were unearthed in China back in two thousand and five,
and according to radiocarbon dating, the ancient millet pasta is
about four thousand years old. Now, the discovery suggests that
China was like the birthplace of the noodle, as none
(27:01):
of the specimens found in other countries come anywhere close
to matching that date. And the really crazy thing is
that this act of preservation happened completely by accident. According
to archaeologists, the ancient settlement where the noodles were found
had been wiped out by a sudden catastrophe, and amidst
the wreckage and human remains, the team found an upturned
bowl and when they lifted it, they found a pile
(27:24):
of neolithic noodles waiting for them. So the archaeologist Kambu
Lee explained it this way. It was this unique combination
of factors that created a vacuum or an empty space
between the top of the sentiment cone and the bottom
of this bowl that allowed the noodles to be perfectly preserved.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
It's interesting, actually, I think I have the perfect thing
to pair with the world's oldest noodles, and that's the
world's oldest wine. It was poured into a funeral urn
in Spain more than two thousand years ago and was
rediscovered inside an underground Roman tomb back in twenty nineteen. Now.
The archaeologist who opened the urn found a glass flask
inside containing about five liters of a reddish brown liquid.
(28:04):
Chemical analysis revealed it to be a white sherry type
wine that's still made in the region today, and it
has since been authenticated as the oldest known example of
a wine that still exists in a liquid form. But
for any connoisseurs out there, attempted to give it a taste.
Keep in mind that cremated remains were also found in
the urrns, so you'll just want to maybe, I don't know,
maybe strain it first.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
I don't know. I like my wine chunky style. One
thing I'd have a harder time saying no to is
a freshly pickled pickle from a Fijian pickle pit. Nice. Now,
the pickling process is thought to have version it in
Mesopotamia as far back as twenty four hundred BCE, but
it holds a special importance in the Pacific Islands, where
(28:46):
the warm, humid climate causes food to spoil much faster.
So to get around that problem, native communities began digging
these fermentation pits, which they would line with banana leaves
to keep out the soil. And the pits were especially
helpful in building up food stores to use celebrations or
you know, in case of storms, and over time the
pits became so vital that they even started to play
(29:06):
a role in the courting process. So in Fiji, for example,
building up a well stocked picklepit shows that a man
is a good provider, which is why it's customary for
men to let a woman's parents inspect their picklepit before
they popped the question. It has some good.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Tongue twisters this episode, and it just sounds sturdy mango.
To be honest with you, My last one doesn't involve
a buried food, but it's such a bizarre case.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Of food preservation that I can't not mention it.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
So.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
According to our friends at Alice Obscura, the world's oldest.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Ham was carried one hundred and twenty three years ago
by Gwaltney Foods Meat Company, this in Smithfield, Virginia. Now,
somehow the ham fell by the wayside for two decades
and remained hanging from the rafters of a packing house
until the early nineteen twenties. The head of the company,
a guy named Pembroke Gwaltney Junior, was so thrilled by
the hams rediscovering that he put a brass collar on
(29:58):
it and started calling it his pet.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
You know how you'd normally.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
React to something like this so weird, And that wasn't
all either. So Gwaltny was so proud of the ham
that he took it to public expositions and showed it
off as proof of the preservative powers of his smoking method.
He claimed the company's process was so effective that its
meats could be stored in definitely without refrigeration. Seems he
was right too, because the century old Ham is still
(30:22):
going strong today. It's on permanent display at the Isle
of White County Museum in Virginia, which, by the way,
is also home to the World's Oldest Peanuts.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
These guys have a lot to brag about in that area.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
It's so old.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
And if you can't make the trip in person, don't worry.
You can still keep up with the Ham's Twitter account
at World's Oldest Ham, or you can keep an eye
on it directly through the museum's twenty four to seven
live streamed ham Camp, of course. And in case you're wondering,
according to microbologist, the ham is still technically edible, although
you know it looks like a petrified football.
Speaker 3 (30:55):
At this point.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Well, even though I love the idea of around the
clock Hamcam, the fact that it is in does give
you a little pause here.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
I think that's fair.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
I still wanted to mention it, but I was going
to give you this week's trophy anyway for the pickle pits,
you know, mainly for the tongue twister there because it's
just so much fun to say.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
I love it. Well, that's going to do it for
today's Part Time Genius. If you enjoyed this episode, come
find us on Instagram at part Time Genius or leave
us a review on Apple Podcasts, and either way we'll
be back in your feed real soon with another brand
new episode from Mary Gabe, Dylan, Will and myself. Thank
you so much for listening. Part Time Genius is a
(31:46):
production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by
Will Pearson and me Mongayshtikler and researched by our good
pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced
by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang.
The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvel
(32:06):
and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay,
Trustee Dara Potts and buy Any Shorey. For more podcasts
from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!