Bougna is a traditional feast dish of the

Kanak people The Kanak (French language, French spelling until 1984: Canaque) are the Indigenous peoples of Oceania, indigenous Melanesians, Melanesian inhabitants of New Caledonia, an overseas collectivity of France in the southwest Pacific Ocean, Pacifi ...

of New Caledonia. The word "bougna" comes from the Drehu word "puhnya" meaning "bundle", "pack". Bougna often contains

taro Taro () (''Colocasia esculenta)'' is a root vegetable. It is the most widely cultivated species of several plants in the family Araceae that are used as vegetables for their corms, leaves, and petioles. Taro corms are a food staple in Afri ...

, yam, sweet potato, banana, and pieces of either

chicken The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated junglefowl species, with attributes of wild species such as the grey and the Ceylon junglefowl that are originally from Southeastern Asia. Rooster or cock is a term for an adu ...

fish Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of ...

, crab, prawns or lobster. The contents are wrapped in

banana leaves The banana leaf is the leaf of the banana plant, which may produce up to 40 leaves in a growing cycle. The leaves have a wide range of applications because they are large, flexible, waterproof and decorative. They are used for cooking, wrappin ...

and are then buried to cook in a ground oven, which uses red-hot rocks heated by fire. After about two hours of cooking, the banana leaves are unearthed and unwrapped, and the contents are eaten.

References

New Caledonian cuisine Earth oven {{NewCaledonia-stub