Māori kai and Asian fusion: Steamed hāngi buns hit supermarket shelves!

Hangi master Rewi Spraggon and Asian bakery owner Amy Sevao have joined culinary forces to produce the world's first Hāngi Buns!!

The collaboration happened almost by accident.

Sevao's dad - a Taiwanese baker - went to a food festival where Spraggon was plying his trade - hāngī. He tried one of his pork belly buns, went home and bought back 20 different flavoured bao buns.

"From there Amy and I got together and came up with the Hāngi Bun. We have a number of different ideas for other joint cuisine collaborations."

There's a gap in the market for authentic Māori-Asian fused kai.

"We saw great potential for the Hāngi bun in both retail and food service, so once we had refined the recipe we invested in an initial production run of 5000 samples to test the water." Sevao said.

"We can produce 10,000 hāngi buns a day, so there's no issue with capacity."

"The Hāngi Bun slot is now scheduled into our production plan for the foreseeable future. Our aim is to ensure that everyone can buy them from their local Pak'nSave or New World supermarket, so our team is working extra hard to make that happen.

The hāngi flavoured steam buns are being stocked in Foodstuffs stores in the North Island "but we'd love to take it nationwide," Spraggon said.

Who's coming with us to get some?

This article was first published by the NZ Herald - Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air - and is republished here with permission.

Need something to listen to while you're at work? Maybe doing chores at home? Catch up on the GREATNESS of Stace, Mike and Anika with the Flava Breakfast podcast.