Skip to main content
Support

Browse by category

All categories
Home

Roots and tubers from Burundi

Imikembe (boiled, water-fermented cassava, Burundi)imikembe

Imikembe is a Burundian household food of cassava roots that are peeled, boiled and broken up to remove the fibres, then left to ferment under water for about a week, with the water changed every two days. The sour cassava is eaten with beans and other legumes.

A short entry: the sources we found record only what is said here about Imikembe itself.

Short entryRoots and tubers7 days

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedHousehold practice with no fixed amounts in the sources read.
Cassava rootsPeeled, washed and boiled until fully cooked[fermdb]
WaterChanged every two days during fermentation[fermdb]
Starterspontaneous

Total time across the recorded steps: 7 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play

What changes: Cassava roots are peeled, washed and boiled until cooked through

Step 1 of 3
Peel, wash and boil the roots
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented

Output: cooked roots.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
soft
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

none (heat)

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Imikembe is a Burundian household food of cassava roots that are peeled, boiled and broken up to remove the fibres, then left to ferment under water for about a week, with the water changed every two days. The sour cassava is eaten with beans and other legumes. Made in 3 steps over 7 days. The longest step, ferment under water, changing the water every two days, takes 7 days (FermDB (Bokulich lab 2009).

Key numbers
Main step7 daysReported[fermdb]Ferment under water, changing the water every two days

What makes this one different

Imikembe is boiled before it ferments, like ubuswage, but it is eaten after one week in water instead of two, and it is not boiled again or pounded into a ball.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Ubuswage (separate entry)Two-week soak, then re-boiled and pounded into a paste ball wrapped in plantain leaves.

Safety

Cassava holds compounds that release cyanide, and simple boiling does not reliably remove them [fao1990]. The Codex code of practice keeps direct cooking for low-cyanide sweet cassava, because these compounds survive heat [codex-rcp73]. No study we found measured cyanide in imikembe, so use only roots known to be low in cyanide. Bitterness is not necessarily a reliable guide to cyanide content [fao1990]. Do not cut the week under water short, and throw away the changed water.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

  1. [aloys2009] Aloys N., Angeline N. 2009, Traditional fermented foods and beverages in Burundi, Food Research International 42(5–6):588–594, doi:10.1016/j.foodres.2009.02.021 (abstract via Europe PMC/AGRICOLA; the process details come from FermDB's summary of this paper)paper
  2. [fermdb] FermDB (Bokulich lab, ETH Zurich), FermDB_data.tsv row 'Imikembe' (citing Aloys and Angeline 2009), CC BY 4.0, read 2026-10web
  3. [fao1990] FAO 1990, Roots, tubers, plantains and bananas in human nutrition, ch. 7, Toxic substances and antinutritional factors (cassava toxicity)gov
  4. [codex-rcp73] Codex Alimentarius, CAC/RCP 73-2013, Code of practice for the reduction of hydrocyanic acid (HCN) in cassava and cassava products (copy hosted by the Slovenian food administration)spec