FermenteaWhere food goes to change
626 sourced equipment pages: vessels, tools, appliances and built structures.
What is made in place. Every type here belongs to a `build` item: it has a site, a ground and a climate, and moving it means rebuilding it.
An in-ground Yucatecan Maya oven that uses fire-heated stones and a covered pit to cook food slowly. Documented pit depth, coverings and loading sequence vary; this page presents sourced examples rather than one standard design.
The Chorkor, also called the Kagan smoker in early FAO documentation, pairs a low rectangular mud/clay oven with stacked removable wooden-frame, wire-mesh trays. FAO records its use at Chorkor, Ghana, from 1971.
A 2003 study describes a bamboo smoking kiln near the Sundarbans, with a sloping golpata roof, raised reed-and-bamboo platform and multiple fireplaces.
The Tahitian ahimā‘a is a ground oven built in a pit, where hot volcanic stones and layered leaves and earth cook food slowly.
An agadir (plural igoudar) is a fixed Amazigh communal storehouse in Morocco for harvests and other valuables. Layout, materials and community rules vary by site; no single plan describes every granary.
A 2007 training manual records one covered shrimp-smoking shed in coastal Bangladesh, with bamboo racks above fires and a site-specific 15 × 45 ft footprint.
A 1974 FAO report describes varied mud fish-smoking ovens around Nigeria’s Kainji Lake basin, including an hourglass form in its northern parts. It documents the form and broad use, but gives no dimensions or construction sequence.
A flood-season pit store described for Omagua communities along the Amazon: manioc tubers were buried before inundation and recovered as waters receded. Its shape and lining are not recorded.
A Swazi ingungu is an underground grain store beneath a homestead cattle kraal in Eswatini; stored grain could ferment slightly, while pest protection was the stated primary benefit.
A small household pit dug into sandy ground on Namu Atoll to ferment breadfruit as bwiru. Nancy J. Pollock's 1968 field account describes its lagoon-side setting, leaf lining and stone-covered opening.
A closed Banda is a fixed fish-smoking oven with enclosing mud-block or compacted-clay walls around a rectangular fire and a grill or wire-mesh platform. Its regional forms are not one standardized plan.
A large clay-lined depression built beneath some Alutiiq house floors in the Kodiak region, documented in Koniag contexts for food storage and possibly fermentation.
A concrete fermentation tank installed below ground at a Senegalese fish-processing site was documented as an adaptation that emulated the older practice of burying fish during fermentation.
A bacówka is a seasonal shepherd’s hut built in place in the Polish Carpathians. Its documented hearth, cheese rooms and roof-space smoking link it to pastoral work; sources do not define one universal plan.
A fire-heated stone bed or mound holds food arranged on the stones and covered with leaves. The Samoan umu is one documented regional instance, not a universal blueprint.
An industrial fermentation patio places factory-made fiberglass-reinforced polyester olive tanks below floor level, with drainage and transfer infrastructure arranged around the buried vessels.
The Ahotor is a modern fixed masonry fish-smoking oven developed in Ghana as an improved alternative to traditional smokers such as the Chorkor.
A temporary, in-place earthen oven used to cook camas with heat retained by fire-heated stones. The dimensions described here belong to one Kalispel-supervised reconstruction, not a universal form.
A fixed malt-drying kiln at Laphroaig on Islay, where peat smoke passes through damp malt before it is fully dried.
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A sixth-century Chinese agricultural text describes a seasonal earthen pit for keeping fresh vegetables through winter, with vegetable kinds separated by alternating rows of produce and soil under a thick straw cover.
The Rwandan urwina is a conical, leaf-lined earth pit that warms green brewing bananas before they are peeled, crushed for juice and fermented separately.
A cetaria is a fixed masonry basin in a Roman fish-processing installation. Examples at Baelo Claudia, Tróia and Monte Molião show varied forms, not one universal design.
A metato is a small chestnut-drying building found in parts of Italy, with a slow fire below and an open timber floor above where chestnuts dry.
A fixed Late Chalcolithic installation in Areni-1 cave combined a shallow clay pressing basin with a large jar set into the cave floor and storage vessels nearby.
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