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Roots and tubers from southern Burundi

Ubuswage (fermented cassava paste, southern Burundi)ubuswage

Ubuswage is a cassava paste from the south of Burundi. Peeled roots are boiled and freed of fibre, soaked in water for two weeks to ferment, boiled again in fresh water, then pounded into a paste that is shaped into a ball and wrapped in plantain leaves.

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

Short entryRoots and tubers14 days

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedHousehold practice with no fixed amounts in the sources read.
Cassava rootsPeeled, washed, boiled and defibred[fermdb]
WaterFor soaking, changed after two days, then fresh water for the second boil[fermdb]
Plantain leavesTo wrap the finished ball[fermdb]
Starterspontaneous

Total time across the recorded steps: 14 days

Start
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What changes: Cassava is peeled, boiled and freed of fibre

Step 1 of 4
Peel, wash, boil and defibre
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented

Output: cooked defibred cassava.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
soft, fibres removed
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

Ubuswage is a cassava paste from the south of Burundi. Peeled roots are boiled and freed of fibre, soaked in water for two weeks to ferment, boiled again in fresh water, then pounded into a paste that is shaped into a ball and wrapped in plantain leaves. Made in 4 steps over 14 days. The longest step, soak in water to ferment, takes 14 days (FermDB (Bokulich lab 2009).

Key numbers
Main step14 daysReported[fermdb]Soak in water to ferment

What makes this one different

Ubuswage is boiled twice, before and after a two-week soak, and pounded into a wrapped ball; imikembe is soaked only a week and eaten in pieces.

Related ferments

Safety

Raw cassava releases hydrogen cyanide, a poison. Food Standards Australia New Zealand warns that boiling removes only 10–75 % of the compounds that form it in the roots and is not reliable on its own. No study we found measures cyanide in ubuswage, so these steps record household practice and are not a tested way to make cassava safe.

History and sources

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

  1. [fsanz-cassava] Food Standards Australia New Zealand, Cassava and bamboo shootsgov
  2. [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
  3. [fermdb] FermDB (Bokulich lab, ETH Zurich), FermDB_data.tsv row 'Ubuswage' (citing Aloys and Angeline 2009), CC BY 4.0, read 2026-10web