Palusami

History

Palusami is a small parcel made of young taro leaves wrapped around a filling of thick coconut milk, onion and sometimes corned beef or meat, tied up and slowly steamed, traditionally in an underground oven called an umu, a pit dug into the ground lined with heated stones where food cooks wrapped in leaves for several hours. This dish is deeply rooted in Samoan culinary traditions, where taro has been an essential subsistence crop for generations, grown on almost every family plot across the archipelago.

Palusami holds a place of honor at Samoan feasts and traditional ceremonies, notably on Sundays during the to’ona’i, the big family meal after church service, as well as at village celebrations where it is prepared in large quantities to be shared collectively. Very similar variations are found in several other Pacific Polynesian cultures (Tonga, Fiji, Wallis and Futuna), each with its own nuances in preparing the coconut cream and in whether or not to add meat.

Ingredients — serves 6

• 20 young taro leaves (or spinach as a substitute)
• 400 ml thick coconut milk
• 1 onion, thinly sliced
• 200 g corned beef or cooked meat (optional)
• Salt

Step-by-step Samoan palusami recipe

1. Wash the taro leaves carefully and remove the toughest stems.
2. Layer several leaves to form a sturdy base that can hold the filling without tearing.
3. Mix the thick coconut milk, sliced onion, optional corned beef and salt.
4. Spoon this mixture into the center of the layered leaves.
5. Fold the leaves to form a small sealed parcel and tie it with a thin leaf strip or kitchen string.
6. Steam the parcels (traditional underground oven or covered home oven) for about 1 hour, until the leaves are very tender.

Cooking method

Technique: slow steaming inside the leaves themselves, the steam from the coconut milk tenderizing the taro leaves from within.

Traditional equipment: underground oven (umu) lined with heated stones, covered with banana leaves to trap the heat.

Tips: always layer several taro leaves before filling; a single layer risks tearing and letting the coconut cream leak out.

Nutrition, per serving

Calculated from the raw ingredient quantities above, divided by six servings.

Notable amounts: saturated fat is unusually high for a vegetable-based parcel — 22 g per serving — because the taro leaves are steamed directly in thick coconut cream, which the technique is built around rather than working against. Fiber comes in around 3 g, largely from the taro leaves themselves. The optional corned beef adds most of the protein; a meat-free version would sit closer to 6-7 g of protein per serving.

Economic context

Samoa is not covered as an individual country in the World Bank / FAO dataset, so the East Asia & Pacific regional average stands in as the closest benchmark. Taro is a subsistence crop grown on most family plots in Samoa, and coconuts are similarly ubiquitous, which keeps the core ingredients largely outside the cash economy even though the dish itself is reserved for Sundays and feasts rather than daily cooking.

Source: World Bank / FAO, Food Prices for Nutrition database (Cost and Affordability of a Healthy Diet) v4.0, 2024 data, CC BY 4.0, DOI 10.57966/41AN-KY81. Retrieved 29 July 2026. Samoa is not covered individually in this dataset; the East Asia & Pacific (WB) regional average is used as an explicit proxy.

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