Tender pork and salty butterfish wrapped in layers of soft lūʻau leaves and steamed slowly until everything becomes rich, savory, and almost meltingly tender—that is the heart of Hawaiian lau lau.
Unlike many dishes that are casually labeled “Hawaiian” because they contain pineapple or teriyaki sauce, lau lau is rooted in Hawaiian food tradition. Its defining ingredients include lūʻau leaves—the leaves of the kalo, or taro, plant—along with pork, fish, Hawaiian salt, and an outer wrapping traditionally made from ti leaves.
The bundles cook for hours, allowing the pork fat and salted fish to season the lūʻau leaves from the inside. When the package is finally opened, the outer ti leaves are removed and the tender lūʻau leaves are eaten along with the meat and fish.
Serve lau lau with poi or rice and cooling sides such as lomi lomi salmon, then finish the meal with haupia.
🌺 Lau Lau at a Glance
Prep time: 30 minutes
Steam time: About 4 hours
Total time: About 4 1/2 hours
Yield: 6 lau lau bundles
Servings: 6
Cooking method: Steaming
Lau lau takes time, but most of that time is hands-off. Once the bundles are wrapped and arranged in the steamer, they simply need a long, gentle cooking period.
The extended cooking time is important for more than tenderness. Raw or undercooked taro leaves can irritate the mouth and throat, so lūʻau leaves need to be cooked thoroughly.
🥩 Ingredients
You will need:
- 2 pounds fresh lūʻau leaves, or taro leaves
- 1 1/2 pounds pork shoulder or pork butt
- 1/2 pound salted butterfish
- 1 tablespoon Hawaiian sea salt, or to taste
- 12 large ti leaves
- Kitchen twine, if needed
This deliberately short ingredient list is part of the appeal.
Traditional-style lau lau does not need garlic powder, pineapple, teriyaki sauce, herbs, or a complicated marinade. The pork, salted fish, lūʻau leaves, and Hawaiian salt provide the flavor.
🌿 What Are Lūʻau Leaves?
Lūʻau leaves are the leaves of the kalo, or taro, plant.
Kalo has profound importance in Hawaiian culture and traditional foodways. Its underground corm is cooked and can be pounded into poi, while the leaves are used in dishes such as lau lau and lūʻau stew.
The leaves become silky and tender after lengthy cooking and absorb the rich juices released by the pork and fish.
You may see the leaves labeled as:
- Lūʻau leaves
- Taro leaves
- Kalo leaves
They are not the same thing as ti leaves.
That distinction is crucial when making lau lau.
⚠️ Taro Leaves Must Be Cooked Thoroughly
Never eat raw lūʻau or taro leaves.
Raw kalo contains calcium oxalate crystals that can cause an intense burning, itching, or irritating sensation in the mouth and throat.
Proper cooking reduces that problem.
The University of Hawaiʻi’s Hawaiʻi Nutrition Center specifically warns that lūʻau leaves must be thoroughly cooked before serving.
That’s one reason lau lau isn’t a quick-steam dish.
The long cooking time softens the leaves, tenderizes the pork, and ensures the lūʻau leaves are properly cooked.
If the leaves still create a prickly or irritating sensation when tasted, they need additional cooking.
🍃 What Are Ti Leaves?
Ti leaves form the outer wrapper of traditional lau lau.
They help hold the bundle together during cooking and contribute to the steaming environment around the food.
Unlike the inner lūʻau leaves, however, the ti-leaf wrapper is removed before eating.
Think of the layers this way:
Inside: pork and salted butterfish
Around the filling: edible lūʻau leaves
Outside: ti leaves used as the cooking wrapper
Keeping those roles straight makes the preparation much easier to understand.
🐖 Choose the Right Pork
Pork shoulder or pork butt is ideal for lau lau.
These cuts contain enough fat and connective tissue to remain moist through several hours of steaming. As the pork cooks, some of that fat renders into the surrounding lūʻau leaves.
That richness is part of what makes properly prepared lau lau so satisfying.
Cut the pork into approximately six equal pieces.
Don’t trim away every bit of fat. Lean pork can become dry during a long cooking time, while a moderate amount of fat keeps the filling juicy and seasons the leaves.
🐟 What Is Butterfish in Lau Lau?
Traditional lau lau frequently includes salted butterfish along with pork.
In Hawaiʻi recipes, the butterfish used for lau lau commonly refers to salted black cod or sablefish.
The fish contributes saltiness and richness, and you don’t need very much.
Cut the butterfish into six small portions so each lau lau gets a piece.
If your butterfish is extremely salty, you can soak it briefly in water according to the product’s directions or your preference before using it.
Don’t automatically add a large amount of salt to the fish itself. Between salted butterfish and Hawaiian salt on the pork, the finished bundle can become overly salty if you’re not careful.
🧼 Prepare the Lūʻau Leaves
Wash the lūʻau leaves thoroughly.
Inspect them carefully and discard any badly damaged or spoiled leaves.
Trim away the stems and remove particularly thick or fibrous sections of the central ribs where necessary.
You’ll generally want several leaves for each lau lau bundle.
Smaller leaves can be layered together, while very large leaves can do more of the wrapping work.
Remember that these are the edible leaves, so handle them as part of the food itself rather than merely as packaging.
🍃 Prepare the Ti Leaves
Wash the ti leaves well.
Remove the stiff central rib from each leaf so it becomes flexible enough to wrap around the bundle.
If your ti leaves are stiff and prone to splitting, warming them gently can make them easier to work with.
You can briefly pass them over low heat or carefully warm them until pliable.
Avoid scorching them.
You’ll generally use two ti leaves per lau lau, crossing them so they can fully enclose the bundle.
🧂 Season the Pork
Place the pork pieces in a bowl and sprinkle them evenly with Hawaiian sea salt.
Rub the salt gently over the meat.
Because salted butterfish will also be included, you don’t need an aggressive salt coating.
Simple seasoning is intentional here.
Lau lau isn’t meant to taste like barbecue pork or teriyaki pork. The long steaming process allows the ingredients to season one another.
🌿 Build the Lau Lau Bundles
Lay several prepared lūʻau leaves in the palm of your hand or on a clean work surface, overlapping them enough to create a secure wrapper.
Place one piece of seasoned pork in the center.
Add one small piece of salted butterfish.
Fold the lūʻau leaves over the filling from several directions until the meat and fish are completely enclosed.
The finished inner bundle should be compact but doesn’t need to look perfect.
As it steams, the lūʻau leaves will soften dramatically around the filling.
🍃 Wrap With Ti Leaves
Place two prepared ti leaves on the work surface in a cross shape.
Set the lūʻau-wrapped filling in the middle.
Bring the ti leaves around the bundle, enclosing it securely.
Tie the bundle with kitchen twine if necessary.
Traditional wrapping methods may use portions of the ti leaf itself to secure the package, but kitchen twine is a practical solution for home cooks.
Repeat until you’ve made six bundles.
♨️ How to Steam Lau Lau
Place the bundles in a large steamer.
Make sure there is enough water in the bottom of the pot to generate steam for an extended cooking period, but don’t submerge the lau lau in the water.
Cover tightly.
Steam for approximately 3 1/2 to 4 hours, checking the water level periodically and adding more hot water when needed.
The pork should become extremely tender, and the lūʻau leaves should be completely soft and thoroughly cooked.
Some larger bundles may require additional time.
Patience is essential. This is not a recipe where you want to shorten the cooking time just because the pork appears done.
The lūʻau leaves also need sufficient cooking.
🔥 Can You Make Lau Lau in the Oven?
Yes.
The University of Hawaiʻi has published a home method that allows lau lau to be baked in a covered dish at 300°F for approximately 4 to 5 hours.
Arrange the securely wrapped bundles in a covered roasting pan or casserole dish.
Adding a small amount of water to the pan can help create a moist cooking environment.
Cover the pan tightly so the bundles effectively steam as they bake.
The result won’t reproduce food cooked in an imu, but it provides a practical option when you don’t own a sufficiently large steamer.
⏱️ Can You Pressure-Cook Lau Lau?
Yes.
Pressure cooking dramatically reduces the amount of time required.
University of Hawaiʻi recipes have included pressure-cooker methods for lau lau, with cooking times far shorter than traditional steaming.
Exact times vary according to the size of the bundles and the pressure cooker, so follow the manufacturer’s instructions and make sure the lūʻau leaves are thoroughly cooked before serving.
Pressure cooking is especially useful if you make lau lau frequently but don’t want to keep a large steamer running for four hours.
🍴 How to Serve Lau Lau
Use tongs to carefully transfer each hot lau lau package to a plate.
Allow it to cool just enough to handle safely.
Remove the outer ti leaves and discard them.
Inside, the dark-green lūʻau leaves should be completely tender and wrapped around soft pork and fish.
Eat the lūʻau leaves, pork, and butterfish together.
The combination is the dish.
Don’t unwrap the bundle and throw away the cooked taro leaves as though they were merely packaging.
🍠 What to Serve With Lau Lau
Lau lau is particularly good as one component of a larger Hawaiian meal.
Traditional and complementary foods include:
- Poi
- Steamed or cooked kalo
- Sweet potato
- Lomi lomi salmon
- Kālua pork
- Poke
- Rice
- Haupia
The cool tomato and salted salmon in lomi lomi salmon provide an excellent contrast to the rich pork.
For another deeply rooted Hawaiian cooking tradition, pair lau lau with kālua pork.
And for dessert, chilled haupia provides a simple coconut finish.
🌺 Is Lau Lau Traditional Hawaiian Food?
Yes.
Lau lau belongs to Hawaiian food tradition rather than the later category generally described as Hawaiʻi local food.
That’s an important distinction.
Foods such as loco moco, saimin, chicken katsu, and Spam musubi developed much later within Hawaiʻi’s multicultural local food landscape.
Lau lau is tied more directly to Hawaiian ingredients and cooking traditions, particularly kalo and the use of leaves to wrap food for long cooking.
The dish has evolved over time, of course. Pork and salted butterfish reflect Hawaiʻi’s changing food history, and individual families prepare lau lau differently.
But its foundation belongs firmly within Hawaiian cuisine.
🌱 The Importance of Kalo in Hawaiian Culture
It’s difficult to understand Hawaiian food without understanding kalo.
Kalo is more than an ingredient.
It occupies an important place in Hawaiian genealogy, agriculture, spirituality, and traditional life.
According to Hawaiian tradition, kalo is closely tied to the origin and ancestry of the Hawaiian people.
Poi made from cooked kalo became a foundational staple, while the plant’s leaves and stems were also used as food.
Using lūʻau leaves in lau lau therefore connects the dish to a crop with significance far beyond nutrition.
This is another reason it’s worth seeking real lūʻau leaves rather than immediately replacing them with whatever leafy vegetable is easiest to find.
🥬 Can You Substitute Spinach for Taro Leaves?
I wouldn’t present spinach as an equivalent substitute.
The previous version of this article recommended spinach or collard greens and suggested they would provide a similar texture and flavor.
They don’t.
Spinach cooks much faster and has a completely different texture and flavor. Collard greens withstand long cooking better, but they still produce a distinctly different dish.
If you cannot obtain lūʻau leaves, you can certainly make lau lau-inspired steamed pork wrapped with another green, but it isn’t going to taste like traditional lau lau.
For a page specifically teaching readers how to make this Hawaiian dish, it’s better to be clear about the distinction.
Frozen lūʻau leaves may be available from Hawaiian or Pacific Island grocery stores even when fresh leaves are difficult to find.
🐟 Can You Make Lau Lau Without Butterfish?
Yes.
Pork-only lau lau is common, and families have many variations.
If salted butterfish is unavailable, you don’t need to replace it with an unrelated white fish just to check a box on the ingredient list.
Simply make pork lau lau.
Other variations can include chicken, beef, or different fish, but pork with salted butterfish remains one of the best-known combinations.
🥥 Does Lau Lau Contain Coconut Milk?
Not usually in the familiar Hawaiian preparation described here.
Other Pacific cultures have their own dishes combining taro leaves, meat or seafood, and coconut milk.
For example, Samoan and Tongan dishes may use taro leaves with coconut cream in preparations that deserve to be understood on their own terms.
Hawaiian lau lau is not simply a generic Polynesian leaf-wrapped dish.
Keeping those food traditions distinct makes Pacific cuisine far more interesting.
You can explore more of those differences through Tiki Kulture’s collection of Hawaiian, Pacific, and tropical-inspired recipes.
🔥 Lau Lau and the Imu
Lau lau can be steamed in a pot, but Hawaiian food traditions also include cooking food in an imu, the underground oven also associated with kālua pig.
In an imu, heated stones and plant materials create a hot, moist cooking environment before the food is covered and allowed to cook slowly.
Lau lau bundles can be included among foods prepared this way.
That method adds a different context and cooking environment than an ordinary stovetop steamer.
For everyday home cooking, though, steaming provides an accessible way to prepare the dish while preserving its defining wrapped-and-slow-cooked structure.
If you’d like to learn more about imu cooking, the history behind Hawaiian kālua pork is a good place to continue.
🎉 Lau Lau for a Hawaiian Meal
Lau lau is especially well suited to a gathering because the individual bundles already create natural portions.
Prepare the bundles ahead of time, refrigerate them safely, then begin steaming several hours before the meal.
While they cook, prepare the sides.
A generous Hawaiian menu might include lau lau, kālua pork, poi or rice, lomi salmon, poke, sweet potato, and haupia.
You don’t need every dish at once.
Even lau lau with rice, lomi lomi salmon, and haupia makes a satisfying meal.
The key is to let the Hawaiian dishes speak for themselves rather than turning the menu into a collection of unrelated foods decorated with pineapple.
🌴 Lau Lau, Lūʻau Leaves, and the Word “Lūʻau”
There’s an interesting connection between the food and the word many people use for a Hawaiian feast.
Lūʻau is the Hawaiian name for young taro leaves.
The term eventually became widely used for Hawaiian feasts and celebrations, particularly during the 19th century.
Today, English speakers often use “luau” to mean almost any Hawaiian-themed party.
Knowing that the word begins with an actual Hawaiian food ingredient provides a useful reminder that a lūʻau is much more than tiki torches, plastic leis, and pineapple decorations.
The foods themselves have histories worth understanding.
🧊 How to Store Leftover Lau Lau
Refrigerate leftover lau lau promptly.
You can keep the cooked bundles wrapped and place them in airtight containers, or remove the outer ti leaves first.
USDA guidance recommends using cooked pork leftovers within 3 to 4 days when refrigerated at 40°F or below.
Reheat leftovers thoroughly to 165°F (74°C).
Steaming is one of the best reheating methods because it warms the bundle without drying out the lūʻau leaves or pork.
You can also microwave individual portions, covered, until thoroughly hot.
❄️ Can You Freeze Lau Lau?
Yes.
Lau lau freezes particularly well, which is useful because the long preparation time makes it practical to prepare a large batch.
Cool the cooked bundles promptly, package them securely, and freeze.
For convenience, freeze individual bundles so you can thaw only what you need.
Thaw frozen lau lau in the refrigerator, then steam until completely hot.
You can also reheat from frozen using an appropriate steaming method, although it will naturally take longer.
🚫 Lau Lau Doesn’t Need a “Health Benefits” Section
The previous article included a section promising numerous health benefits from lau lau.
That isn’t necessary.
Lūʻau leaves contain nutrients, and pork and fish provide protein, but lau lau can also contain substantial amounts of fat and sodium depending on the ingredients and portion.
Rather than turning a culturally important dish into a wellness claim, it’s better to appreciate it as food.
Enjoy lau lau as part of a varied diet and build the meal around whatever portions and side dishes suit you.
Its cultural history, unusual ingredients, and wonderful flavor already give us plenty to talk about.
🌺 A Hawaiian Dish Worth Taking the Time to Make
Lau lau is not fast food.
Preparing the leaves, cutting the pork, portioning the butterfish, building each bundle, and steaming everything for hours requires time.
But that’s also what makes the dish rewarding.
The long cooking process transforms sturdy lūʻau leaves into something silky and tender. Pork shoulder becomes soft enough to pull apart with almost no effort. A small piece of salted butterfish seasons the entire package.
When you finally open the ti leaves, everything inside has cooked together.
And unlike countless recipes labeled “Hawaiian” simply because pineapple was added, lau lau offers a direct opportunity to cook with ingredients and techniques genuinely connected to Hawaiian food tradition.
Use real lūʻau leaves when you can. Cook them thoroughly. Keep the seasoning simple. Give the bundles enough time.
Then serve your lau lau with lomi lomi salmon, kālua pork, or a cool square of haupia and enjoy one of Hawaiʻi’s enduring traditional foods.
🔗 Related Articles
- Hawaiian Kālua Pork
- Lomi Lomi Salmon Recipe
- Haupia Recipe: Traditional Hawaiian Coconut Pudding
- Hawaiʻi-Style Shoyu Ahi Poke
- Hawaiʻi-Style Saimin
- Food & Recipes
📚 Sources & Further Reading
- University of Hawaiʻi — Laulaus Recipe
- University of Hawaiʻi CTAHR — ADAP Pacific Island Food Recipes
- University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa CTAHR — Pacific Food Guide: Taro
- Hawaiʻi Nutrition Center — Taro
- Hawaiʻi Nutrition Center — Beef Lūʻau
- Onolicious Hawaiʻi — Hawaiian Lau Lau
- USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service — Is Pork Safe to Eat?
- USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service — How Long Can You Keep Cooked Pork?
