Curanto

Curanto is a traditional Chilote method of cooking food using heated rocks buried in an earth oven, covered with pangue leaves and turf. Prepared outdoors in a pit about half a meter deep, it is called curanto en hoyo; stones are heated in a campfire until red hot, then the ingredients, typically seafood and potatoes along with traditional Chiloe preparations such as milcao and chapalele, meats, sausages and sometimes crustaceans, are placed on top. Its preparation has been documented in ethnographic accounts since the sixteenth century, and it later spread through southern Chile with the migratory flow of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.