One Bite of Kalua Cabbage Transports Me Back to My Childhood

Smoky pork and cabbage are such a classic union in Hawaii that if you see it on a menu, it’s always written kalua cabbage. The words are almost always elided, sort of like when my grandma would call for me and my cousins. Instead of shouting all our names individually—Nikki, Kiki, Ash and Lani—she’d yell something that sounded like “NikkiKiki, get over here!”

My cousins and I would travel in a pack, wearing identical Hawaiian Electric T-shirts we had all gotten for Christmas from Auntie Myra over our swimsuits, beach towels tied around our waists worn in place of pants or shorts. On long hot summer days, we would pile into the back of Auntie Robbi’s pickup and head to the North Shore to be pummeled by the surf for hours. At night, we’d sleep over, a tangle of sun-kissed limbs on her living floor. Sometimes, the sleepovers took place in my grandparents’ living room in Waipahu, where we’d be cocooned in light blankets, taking turns on the carpet or couch. 

But before “going beach,” we’d have to eat. There was always someone in the kitchen, an uncle or an aunt, microwaving last night’s rice, frying up corned beef hash with eggs splashed with shoyu or combining leftover kalua pig with cabbage, although the ratio was far more cabbage than meat. Cabbage was always a way to stretch the meat, and the meat was a way of getting us to eat more vegetables. 

Kalua pig, traditionally made in an imu—an underground oven lined with lava rocks—is by far Hawaii’s most important pork dish. The word “kalua” or “ka lua” translates to “the hole,” as the imu is an underground hole, lined with lava rocks to convey heat and green vegetation like banana leaves and ti leaves that, when heated, generate steam. An imu is essentially an underground crock pot, steaming fish, whole pigs, taro, sweet potatoes and bananas to feed enormous gatherings of families. (Apparently, my uncles built an imu in my grandma’s backyard once, digging up the lawn. She wasn’t happy.) 

Of all the iterations of kalua pig you’ll see—kalua pig nachos, kalua pig tacos, kalua pig sliders—kalua cabbage is the most transportive, the humblest and the most delicious. The sweetness of the cabbage balances out the richness of the pork. When we’d want kalua pig normally, we’d pick it up from Helena’s Hawaiian Food, Highway Inn or even Costco.

It’s the first thing Hawaiian people living on the mainland will make to allay their homesickness. You can make a perfectly serviceable version in a slow cooker with sea salt, a splash of liquid smoke, pork shoulder, and nothing else. On one visit back to Oahu to eat at Helena’s Hawaiian Food, before I opened my own former restaurant serving Hawaii’s local food in Philadelphia, Elaine, the late matriarch of the restaurant and daughter of its founder Helen Chock, whispered to me, “When I lived on the mainland, I made kalua pig in a crock pot with liquid smoke.”  I felt validated and comforted.

But there are other, better ways to make it and, over the years, I’ve tinkered with the process, both for my former food truck and then for my restaurant. I’ve continued to evolve my recipe, which is so simple, it’s barely a recipe but more like a trick—replacing the liquid smoke with lapsang souchong, the smokiest tea I can find.

I’d save the cooking liquid and use it like a master sauce. I added whole bananas to the slow cooker. (This is the culinary trick I am most proud of coming up with. Bananas and pork have their own mystical union.) I wrapped the pork shoulder in banana leaves. When reheating the pork for service, we’d first simmer the cabbage in the reserved juices. The cabbage was heaven on its own—you almost didn’t need the pig at all. The flavor of the pork in the juices suffices, enshrouding the cabbage. 

I ate it standing up in my food truck between customers. After I opened the restaurant, my lunches frequently consisted of a bowl of rice with scraps of fresh poke, a strand of kalua pig and a bouquet of pig-scented cabbage, hunched over my desk in our basement office until I had to sprint upstairs to assist our cooks and get through intense lunch rushes. 

Both the food truck and restaurant are becoming distant memories to me now, like those cousin sleepovers. But eating kalua cabbage erases the distance between all these memories and takes me back.