Iban Longhouse Feast · Bamboo-Cooked Chicken

Manok Pansoh

🎋

Photo coming soon

The chicken cooks with no added oil or water at all — seasoned with salt, fragrant leaves, and tuhau stem, it's funneled into a hollow bamboo stalk and set over an open fire, which does the work of both pot and stove.

Chicken is marinated with lemongrass, ginger, garlic, and torch ginger flower, then packed into a hollow bamboo stalk sealed with leaves and set to cook directly over an open fire. It's served to visitors at the Iban longhouse of Teraja, at the end of the road into Belait's Kampung Labi rainforest, where it's a standout dish served by the longhouse's senior women.

Why it's made this way: Bamboo cooking is a longstanding Iban technique for feeding a longhouse without pots large enough for the whole community, and Teraja's residents now share the dish with the thousands of visitors who trek in each year to see the longhouse and its surrounding waterfalls.