Their usual methods of cooking are roasting and boiling.

Roasting is usually effected by making a fire, letting it die down into red-hot ashes, and then putting the food without wrap or covering into the ashes, turning it from time to time.  They also roast by holding the food on sticks in the flame of the burning fire, turning it occasionally.  Stone cooking is adopted for pig and other meats.  They make a big fire, on the top of which they spread the stones; when the stones are hot enough, they remove some of them, place the meat without wrap or covering on the others, then place the removed stones on the meat, and finally pile on these stones a big covering of leaves to keep in the heat.  Stone cooking in the gardens is done in a slightly different way; there they dig in the ground a round hole about 1 foot deep and from 1 1/2 to 2 feet in diameter, and in this hole they make their fire, on which they pile their stones; and the rest of the process is the same as before.  This hole-making process is never adopted in the village.  The only reason for it which was suggested was that the method was quicker, and that in the gardens they are in a hurry.  Of course, holes of this sort dug in the open village enclosure would be a source of danger, especially at night.

Boiling is done in pieces of bamboo about 4 inches in diameter and about 15 or 18 inches long.  They fill these with water, put the food into them, and then place or hold the bamboo stems in a slanting position in the flames.  This method is specially used for cooking sweet potatoes, but it is their only method of boiling anything.  Water, which they keep stored and carry in bamboo receptacles and hollow pumpkins, is boiled in bamboo stems in the same way.  The bamboo storage vessels are generally from 2 to 5 feet long, the intersecting nodes, other than that at one end, having been removed.  The pumpkins (Plate 52, Figs. 2 and 3) are similar to those used by the Roro coast people and in Mekeo, except that the usual form, instead of being rather short and broad with a narrow opening, is longer and narrower, some of them being, say, 3 feet long, and often very curved and crooked in shape.

Their only eating utensils are wooden dishes and small pieces of wood, or sometimes of cassowary or kangaroo bone, which are used as forks, and pieces of split bamboo, which are used for cutting meat; but these latter are used for other purposes, and rather come within the list of ordinary implements, and will be there described.  They also use prepared pig-bones as forks; but these again are largely used for other purposes, and will be described under the same heading.