Ube

Dioscorea alata · Tuber

40 pairings

Ube is the deep-violet tuber of the water yam (Dioscorea alata), a tropical climbing vine grown across Asia and the Pacific. Cooked it turns soft, sweet and faintly nutty-vanilla, and its vivid purple flesh has made it a signature colour and flavour of Filipino desserts.

Picking a good onedrag

Just cured, rock hardSprouted and soft

Shop firmThe all-rounder: boil and mash, steam, or bake it dry for a nuttier, more caramelised flesh.Buy it

SkinSkin dulling and dusty, a shallow wrinkle at one end

HeftHard right through, the faintest give at the tapered tip

Cut faceViolet a shade duller, the face dry and clean

HeadClean, at most a dry corky scar

What to look for, from just cured, rock hard to sprouted and soft.

What one gives you

86%

Usable yield

860 g a kilo · skin off

Keeping ittap a band

Not the fridge: at 12 °C and below the flesh discolours and softens waterlogged, then decays — five weeks at 5 °C, five days at 2 °C.

Humidity

70–80%

Drier than most roots want. A damp skin starts the fungal rots that take a whole tuber inside a week or two, and a cut face rots sooner.

Airflow

Free and ventilated

Aeration is most of yam storage: a whole fresh tuber wants a slatted crate or an open basket, never a sealed bag, never stacked deep.

Makes almost none, minds everyone else's

It gives off almost none itself but sits on the damaged-by-ethylene list — keep the tuber clear of apples, bananas and ripening tomatoes.

Preparing

Ube