Barbacoa

Barbacoa is the indigenous Mexican technique of slow-cooking meat, traditionally whole sheep, cows, goats or beef heads, in a pit or earth oven dug into the ground and covered with the leaves of the agave, or maguey, plant. The result is meat that is notably fatty and strongly flavored, customarily served with onions and cilantro, and different indigenous groups in Mexico had their own names for the technique before the Spanish-derived word barbacoa became standard, including nakakoyonki in Nahuatl, piib in Mayan and thumngo in Otomi. Similar pit or earth-oven cooking traditions exist elsewhere in the Americas and the Pacific under their own names, including pachamanca and huatia in the Andes, curanto in Chile and Argentina, and hangi in New Zealand, though barbacoa's own origin is unrelated to the Taino word that gave English the word barbecue.