Is ube the next matcha?

Purple food is popping off across Aotearoa as more people develop a taste for a brightly coloured Fillipino yam that’s used in sweet and savoury dishes alike.

Ube (pronounced ooo-bay) is a starchy tuber that’s native to the Philippines. It has a subtle taste that belies its vibrant colour. While it’s well-known in Filipino food culture, it used to be a delicacy only available in Asian food stores in Aotearoa. Now, it’s turning up everywhere.

Lincoln Tan, director of Chow Luck Club, co-organised a recent Ube Fiesta with the Filipino Market. He says the flavour has a growing number of fans.

“In Auckland it's super popular. You see that in everything from savoury to sweet. It's not just a Filipino thing now, it's actually used by all the different cultures, including a lot of New Zealand dishes as well.”

You can't buy raw ube in New Zealand, it comes imported in frozen bags, grated, sold at Filipino supermarkets or directly from suppliers costing about $10 for 450g. 

Food influencer Analiza Badilles has been trying to grow ube in her Auckland backyard. She’s worked in the food industry for 34 years and says she’s not surprised by the vegetable’s rising popularity in New Zealand.

“Ube has a nutty, kind of earthy taste. It's quite complimentary with coconut. Majority of it is made into sweets, but there are dishes that uses ube into savoury dishes too, like in the soup.” 

Dennis Jomoc, an ube researcher at Bohol Island State University in the Philippines, says ube grows the best in tropical and subtropical regions with a temperature ranging 22 degrees Celsius to 25 degrees Celsius, and it cannot tolerate frost.

The colder Auckland winter is making it challenging for Badilles to keep her ube alive, but she is not giving up.

Anj and PJ Anos run a start-up food business, The Caramella Bakery, selling Filipino treats - their ube-filled empanadas are one of the most popular dishes at the markets they attend. They think the pastry's popularity is partly due to the real ube in the filling.

“When people from our country taste it, they will have that feeling that this is the real thing. This is what we grew up with because it's part of our culture, so we don't cut corners.”

“There's really love in making the jam here. There's no way to make it faster. After a day's work of mixing halaya [ube jam] my arm will know that, I'm developing big muscles here.”

To make a small batch of ube jam, called ube halaya, Anj mixes grated ube with coconut milk and coconut cream. She has to constantly stir the mixture on low to medium heat for about an hour to prevent it from burning, adding in butter half way through.

“We're very proud of ube, because it's native [to us] and we wish that there will be more push on our agriculture for ube farmers. I think there is now a global demand for ube. But the problem is authenticity. Not everyone will use real ube. They will just use the extract. That's just chemicals. That's not the real thing.”

Jomoc says ube has many health benefits. It has a low glycaemic index, and the purple pigment comes from an antioxidant called anthocyanin that may help reduce blood pressure and inflammation.

According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, yam exports doubled between 2018 and 2022.

But, Jomoc says production volume has been dropping at a rate of 10 percent each year.

“The ube farms are just small. If you have to look at economies of scale, it is not actually economically attractive. [And] the inefficiency of work with manually creating mounds for land preparation. The average age of growers here in Bohol is 61 years old. So that's the problem.”

Production shortage has made room for fake processed ube goods products in the market, made either with artificial flavouring, or combining flavouring with cheaper root crops like kumara or potato.

Anj explains, if she were to use kumara and ube flavouring to make her jam, it would cost her only a quarter as much than if she uses the $10/450g frozen ube imported from the Philippines.