Tucupi negro

A dark sauce from bitter cassava

Tucupi negro is a dark sauce made from yuca brava, the bitter form of cassava (Manihot esculenta). Yuca brava is toxic when raw, and the sauce is the product of a process that removes that toxicity while concentrating the flavour of the root. Its English name in the Slow Food listing is black chilli, although the sauce is not a chilli product; peppers are an addition.

Producers and buyers describe it as having an umami-like flavour. The 2019 account records that the sauce is thin like broth in some communities and pasty in others, and that each community makes it a little differently.

Names and peoples

The sauce has many names. Slow Food lists ommaï (Uitoto), kígai (Muinane), do-hmepa (Bora) and ualako (Yucuna), and the 2019 account adds tucupí preto, ají negro and casaramá. The names follow the peoples who make it, and the sauce is traditionally made by Uitoto, Bora, Muinane, Ocaina, Andoke, Nonuya and Yucuna peoples of Northwest Amazonia.

Women distinguish their own version from those of other groups. The Slow Food account notes that the knowledge is at risk, because younger women rarely make the sauce and the recipe may be lost within a generation.

How it is made

The bitter root is peeled, washed and chopped, then soaked in stream water. The sources disagree on how long: Slow Food gives one to two days, and the 2019 account says several days. The soaked pieces are pounded in a mortar carved from a hollow tree trunk and pressed in a long woven strip, which is wrapped, hung and twisted for several hours.

The juice that comes out carries starch. It is left to rest for several hours so the starch settles, and the starch is removed. The starch becomes flour for roasting or cassava bread, or starch cassava and cahuana.

The starch-free juice is then simmered for five to eight hours until it thickens. Hot peppers go in at this stage. The Slow Food account says that filtering and cooking remove the cyanide present in raw manioc, and that is why the sources treat these steps as essential.

Tucupí and tucupí negro

The 2019 account describes a sequence: the boiled juice becomes tucupí, and that juice reduced further becomes tucupí negro. Tucupí is the lighter sauce, and tucupí negro is the darker, more concentrated one.

Fresh manioc can be grated and sieved without soaking, which the Slow Food account describes as a variant giving a sweeter and lighter sauce.

Uses and occasions

The sauce is a seasoning and a dip. It is eaten daily with cassava bread, used as a marinade for meat and fish, and added to stews. Traditional dishes named in the 2019 account include tacacá and pato no tucupí.

On festive occasions it is mixed with fish, meat, ants, vegetables, palm flowers and oily seeds to make dishes that identify each group's cooking. Doña Brazi, the producer named in the 2019 account, mixes it with sauvà ants, which the account says give a lemongrass-like flavour.

Packaged sale

In Pucaurquillo the sauce is now sold packaged. The 2019 account reports 24 women employed across the expanded communities, earnings twice as high per volume as before, and 200 ml bottles sold for about 40 soles. The Yuti brand is one commercial route.

Some city restaurants have adopted the sauce, and the 2019 account names Lima, Roraima and Bogotá kitchens where it is used with seafood, mushrooms and game.

Notes

The sources do not give quantities, a fermentation duration or a yield for household making, so this page gives none. The date of origin is unknown. The Yuti page gives no production dates, and the history of cassava processing in general does not date this sauce.