Home grown food
Peru has over 5000 species of potatoes and is home to a lot of other tubers, legumes, amaranthaceaes, tomatoes and corn. Let’s have a closer look to some of them.
- Quinoa or Quinua is already known outside of South America. There are three different varieties: white, red and black.
- Kaniwa is similar to Quinoa, it has over 200 varieties (only 20 in use) and is also home to the Altiplano. It is nutritional and an important food for the farmers, as they often don’t have much else. Naturally it is resistant to almost everything.
- Tarwi is a bean similar to lupin. It is mainly used in soups, stews, salads and mixed with boiled maize. It contains 40% protein and 20% fat (mainly omega-6 and a bit omega-3). The plant is able to fix nitrogen from the air and therefore improves the soil structure.
- Lima bean, large seeded variety, also called butter bean.
- Maca is a root of the cruciferous family. It can be roasted, mashed and boiled, cooked with other veggies in empanadas, jams, soups, ground for bread flour, fermented for beer. The leaves can be used aa salad.
- Oca, already known in New Zealand, is a tuber but its leaves are also edible.
- Mashua another tuber, can be eaten raw and cooked. It has a strong taste though.
- Ulluco is the most widely used tuber in the Andean area besides potatoes. Its leaves are also edible and similar to spinach. The tuber is not suitable for frying and baking due to its high water content. It’s the main ingredient of Olluquito.
- Kaywa is a cucumber like fruit. The young fruits are eaten raw, the old fruits are cooked. In appearance closer to bell peppers it is mainly stuffed with other vegetables. The young shoots and leaves can be eaten as greens.
- Ají Amarillo kind of chili pepper.
- Rocoto kind of chili pepper.
- Ají Mochero kind of chili pepper.
- Potatoes derive from one common subspecies. They differ in size, shape, colour and taste.
- Tomatoes are native to Peru, therefore there are many varieties.
- Maize the corn grown in Peru is bigger and sweeter in taste it did not get around outside of Latin America.

