Papua New Guinea

Oceania · This week's dish comes from Highlands

About Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea's cuisine is as diverse as its 800 languages, built on sweet potato (kaukau), taro, sago, and the mumu earth oven. Fresh fish, pork, and highland greens reflect one of the world's most varied food cultures.

The lowlands and the highlands eat differently. Along the Sepik and the Fly delta the staple is sago, starch washed out of the pith of a felled palm, a job split by gender with men cutting and crushing and women extracting, then cooked into a stiff jelly eaten almost daily. The highlands, higher and cooler, live on sweet potato.

Sweet potato is not ancient here. Its arrival transformed highland agriculture, allowing settlement at altitudes that could not support the older crops and supporting the pig herds that go with ceremonial exchange. The mumu earth oven belongs to the same family as the Fijian lovo, the Samoan umu, the Maori hangi and the Solomon Islands motu.

The wider picture: Island kitchens where coconut and the sea rule.

This week's dish: Saksak (Sago and Banana Dumplings)

Pearls of sago and sweet banana set in coconut cream, the pudding that turns up at feasts across Papua New Guinea.

Serves 6 · Prep 15 min · Cook 20 min · Difficulty: easy

See the full recipe: ingredients, steps and dietary swaps →

Grown-up jobs: any step that uses a hot stove, oven, boiling water, or a sharp knife is for a teacher or parent. Children can measure, mix, and assemble.

Discussion prompts

1. Find Papua New Guinea on a world map or globe. It sits in Oceania. Which oceans or neighboring countries does it touch, and roughly how far is it from where you live?

2. Saksak (Sago and Banana Dumplings) comes from Highlands, in Papua New Guinea. Read its ingredient list together. Which of those foods do you think are grown or raised nearby, and how might the country's climate and landscape explain that?

3. Read the short story behind Saksak (Sago and Banana Dumplings). How have the people, trade routes, and history of Papua New Guinea shaped what ends up on the plate there?

4. Compare Saksak (Sago and Banana Dumplings) to a dish your own family cooks. What is similar, what is different, and what one question would you ask a family in Papua New Guinea about how they make and share it?

5. After you cook Saksak (Sago and Banana Dumplings), add Papua New Guinea to a classroom map and give it a stamp. Write down one fact about its food or geography that you did not know this morning.

🌍 Spin the Globe · Geography through food · spintheglobeofficial.com/for-teachers

🍽 Open the full Saksak (Sago and Banana Dumplings) recipeServings dial, dietary swaps for every table, and its own print button.

🍳 Kitchen SchoolShort lessons on the core skills the recipes lean on.

📋 More teacher resourcesThe printable passport, how to run Country of the Week, and every country page.