First, find any area in the backyard that is big and wide for the hole to be dug out at the size wanted. A good pachamanca size is 3 feet wide and 3 feet deep. Now, mark it and dig the hole up. Collect up the soil, rocks, and sands dug out and put it on the side, as they will come in handy later, especially the rocks. The rocks will be place in the earth oven when they are cooked up to be very hot. How hot? The rocks should get between 600 and 800 degrees. The space to make the rocks hot should help raise the fire’s temperature higher with plenty of wood. It will take some time to cook up the rocks to that temperature; ignite the fire two to four hours prior to formally cooking up the pachamanca earth oven.

Next, file the bottom layer in the pachamanca with banana leaves, followed bya layer of the burning rocks. In terms of moving these triple-digit rocks from thefire to the pit, get a weeding tool to shift the rocks to a heavy shovel, which then can safely shift the rocks inside the pit.

Once the rocks are safely placed, lay the food on top of them by sticking it inside an aluminum dish and cover it up with plenty of strong aluminum foil in order to keep the heat inside and fairly easy to move around on top. The food won’t dry out and it makes the formal cooking process smoother in this new earth oven.

Pachamanca (from Quechua pacha “earth”, manka “pot”) is a traditional Peruvian dish based on the baking, with the aid of hot stones (the earthen oven is known as a huatia), of lamb, mutton, pork, chicken or guinea pig, marinated in spices.

Click here to read about how to build a Earth Oven Hot Stones BBQ Pit DIY Project:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Pachamanca-Earth-Oven-BBQ/
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