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| Trimmed agave is
ready to be cooked. |
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| The prickly repast is placed in a
shallow pit. |
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| This fire-starting kit never runs out
of fluid. |
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Earth-Oven Cooking
Earth ovens are buried cooking facilities that Indians utilized to
prepare foods requiring a long cooking time, usually 12–48 hours. Dr. Phil Dering
has learned how the Indians prepared foods in earth ovens by reading
historical accounts of earth oven cooking, and then using these accounts as
a guide to build his own earth ovens.
 View
slide show of earth-oven cooking
The main food he has cooked in the ovens is an agave commonly called
lechuguilla (leh-choo-gee-ya—with a hard “g”).
Here is the 5-step process for cooking lechuguilla in an earth oven.
- Prepare broad, shallow pit with sloping walls (about 20–24 inches deep
by 6 or 7 feet wide). Loosely stack approximately 250 pounds of wood
(branches) and place 250 pounds of large rock into the wood.
- Get out the fire-starting kit and ignite the wood. Let it burn until
only hot coals are left. By now the heat has been transferred from the
burning wood to the rocks, which act as a heating element.
- The exposed rocks are VERY HOT, about 1,100° F, and VERY DANGEROUS.
The next step, place the green packing material the food on the hot rock
heating element, has to be done QUICKLY, or the prickly pear pads will burst
into flame. Put the trimmed lechuguilla on the packing material.
- Cover the food with leaves or a mat, then cover everything with dirt,
making certain that the oven is completely sealed.
- Open the oven after waiting 48 hours, remove the cooked lechuguilla,
(which now it smells like molasses), pound the stems into pulp and shape it
into flatcakes. Dry the cakes in the sun.
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