In France, ube is almost always associated with sweet things: purple lattes, mauve cheesecakes, Filipino ice creams. In the Philippines, however, purple yam is first and foremost a tuber — a starchy vegetable cooked the way you would cook a potato or a sweet potato. Plain ube powder contains no added sugar: nothing stops it joining a gnocchi dough, a risotto or a hummus. It is even one of the few ingredients able to colour a savoury dish a genuine purple, with no synthetic colouring and without distorting the taste.
This page brings together 7 savoury ube recipes that we have tested in our kitchen, with the exact doses, the pairings that work and the mistakes to avoid. Still largely unexplored territory — and probably the best way to use a large format without baking cakes and nothing else.
The ingredient behind these recipes: Plain Ube Powder 200 g — 16.90 €, 100 % Kinampay purple yam, a single ingredient, no added sugar. For savoury cooking, be sure to take the plain version: the flavoured powders (cherry, mango, coconut, vanilla, hazelnut) are designed for drinks and desserts.
Why ube works in savoury cooking
Three properties make ube powder relevant on a savoury plate.
A discreet aromatic profile. The taste of ube is mild and vegetal, with notes of vanilla and hazelnut and the very slight bitterness of a tuber. In a dessert, that bitterness goes unnoticed. In a savoury dish it acts as a background flavour — the way a chestnut or squash purée would. It will never dominate a stock, a cheese or an olive oil.
Starch. Ube is a starchy vegetable. Its powder absorbs water and thickens: a natural binder, valuable in soups, purées and fresh pasta, where it brings body as well as colour.
A colour that holds. The anthocyanins in the Kinampay tuber stand up well to gentle cooking. That is what sets ube apart from the other natural purple colourings: beetroot turns brownish-pink when cooked, red cabbage goes blue-green as soon as it meets an alkaline ingredient. Ube stays purple.
The 3 rules of savoury ube
- Halve the dose. In baking, you count 2 to 3 tablespoons per preparation. In savoury cooking, 1 to 2 teaspoons per portion is enough: you are after the colour and a background flavour, not a dominant taste.
- Stay below 180 °C. Above that, the colour browns at the edges. Boiling, steaming, wok cooking and a moderate oven are your allies. See our complete dosage guide.
- Bring in fat, acidity and umami. Ube on its own falls flat in savoury cooking. Olive oil, butter, coconut milk on one side; lemon, vinegar, yoghurt on the other; parmesan, miso, soy sauce, confit garlic for depth. It is this triangle that tips the preparation onto the savoury side.
1. Purple ube gnocchi
Our flagship recipe, and by far the most spectacular on the plate: deep purple gnocchi, briefly pan-fried in sage butter. Here the ube powder replaces part of the flour, which gives a meltier texture than classic gnocchi.
Serves 4 — 40 min: 800 g floury potatoes (Bintje), 3 tbsp ube powder (20 g), 200 g plain flour (T55), 1 egg yolk, 1 tsp fine salt, 1 pinch of nutmeg. To finish: 60 g butter, about ten sage leaves, parmesan, pepper.
- Boil the potatoes whole in their skins for 30 to 35 minutes. Peel them while still hot and pass them through a potato ricer (never a blender, which makes the purée elastic).
- Let them cool for 10 minutes, then work in the egg yolk, the salt and the nutmeg.
- Sift the flour and the ube powder together, then add them to the purée in three goes. Work the dough as little as possible: it only needs to stop sticking.
- Roll into 2 cm ropes, cut 2 cm pieces and roll them over the back of a fork to ridge them.
- Poach them in a large pan of gently simmering salted water. They are done as soon as they rise to the surface — give them 30 seconds more, no longer.
- Foam the butter in a pan with the sage, drain the gnocchi and toss them for 2 minutes. Parmesan, pepper, serve.
The tip: do not over-salt the cooking water. Too much salt accentuates the bitterness of the tuber.
2. Ube purée, savoury version
This is the founding recipe, the one everything else follows from. Ube purée works just as well as a dessert or as a side. In the savoury version: potatoes or celeriac, ube powder, butter, a touch of confit garlic and a dash of cream. Served under a white fish or a roast, it turns an ordinary plate into one people photograph.
Count 1 level teaspoon of powder per person. Beyond that, the texture becomes slightly grainy.
3. Purple fresh tagliatelle
Fresh pasta is probably the most obvious savoury use. For 300 g of flour, replace 25 g of the flour with 25 g of ube powder, add 3 eggs and a spoonful of olive oil. Knead for 10 minutes, rest for 30 minutes in the fridge under cling film, then roll out and cut.
The colour really comes out after cooking: fresh pasta goes from a pale mauve when raw to a deep purple once poached for 2 minutes. Serve it simply — olive oil, garlic, pecorino, lemon zest. A tomato sauce would crush the colour as much as the taste.
4. Purple ube risotto
Make a classic risotto (arborio rice, shallot, white wine, chicken stock). Dissolve 2 tsp of ube powder in a ladle of hot stock and stir it in at the end of cooking, along with the butter and parmesan of the mantecatura. Added too early, the powder absorbs the liquid and the rice cooks badly.
The pairing that works best: ube and gorgonzola, or ube and toasted hazelnuts — a direct echo of the natural nutty notes of Kinampay.
5. Purple hummus
The easiest on the list, and the most effective as an aperitif. Blend 400 g of cooked chickpeas, 2 tbsp of tahini, the juice of one lemon, 1 garlic clove, 4 tbsp of olive oil, salt — and 2 tsp of ube powder. Loosen with a little iced water until you get a creamy texture.
The lemon is essential: the acidity fixes the colour and offsets the sweetness of the tuber. Serve with a drizzle of olive oil and black sesame seeds for contrast.
6. Purple focaccia
In your usual focaccia dough, replace 30 g of flour with 30 g of ube powder for 500 g of total flour. The dough rises normally — ube powder does not interfere with the yeast.
The point to watch is the baking: a focaccia is usually baked at 220 °C. Come down to 200 °C and add 5 minutes. The crust will be a little paler, but the crumb will stay frankly purple. Top with rosemary, fleur de sel and olives; the green-and-black contrast on purple is superb.
7. Ube, coconut and ginger soup
A complete autumn soup. Sweat an onion and 2 cm of grated ginger, add 600 g of diced sweet potato, cover with vegetable stock and cook for 20 minutes. Blend with 200 ml of coconut milk and 1 tbsp of ube powder, then adjust with salt and lime.
The starch in the ube thickens the soup: there is no need to add cream. The lime finish is not optional — it is what stops the dish tipping into the over-sweet.
Dosage: the savoury benchmarks
| Preparation | Dose of ube powder | Base |
|---|---|---|
| Purée, mash | 1 tsp | per person |
| Hummus, dip, cold sauce | 2 tsp | per 400 g |
| Fresh pasta | 25 g | per 300 g of flour |
| Bread, focaccia | 30 g | per 500 g of flour |
| Risotto | 2 tsp | for 4 people |
| Soup, velvet soup | 1 tbsp | per litre |
The pairings that work (and those to avoid)
Go for: coconut milk and ginger (the original Filipino pairing); mild, salty cheeses — parmesan, pecorino, feta, gorgonzola; toasted nuts, hazelnut and macadamia first of all; citrus, lime above all; black sesame, as much for the taste as for the visual contrast; confit garlic and a fruity olive oil.
Avoid: tomato, whose acidity and colour cancel out all your work; curry and paprika, which turn the purple brown; heavily browning cooking methods (deep-frying, grilling, a very hot oven); very salty stocks, which bring out the bitterness.
The 4 classic mistakes
- Using a flavoured powder. A vanilla focaccia has never convinced anyone. In savoury cooking, only the plain powder, 100 % purple yam.
- Pushing the dose to get “more purple”. Beyond the benchmarks above, the texture turns floury and the bitterness takes over. If the colour looks weak to you, the problem is the powder, not the quantity.
- Not sifting. Ube powder clumps easily on contact with flour. Always sift the powders together.
- Cooking too hot. This is the only real limit of ube in savoury cooking. Below 180 °C, all is well; above it, the colour goes.
Which ube powder for savoury cooking?
A pale powder, cut with fillers or dried at high temperature, will give a greyish purple that survives no cooking at all. Ours comes from the Kinampay variety of the Visayas, gently dried and finely milled, with a batch number on every pouch and packing carried out in Aix-en-Provence.
- Ube Powder 100 g — 12.90 €: to try savoury cooking on a few recipes.
- Ube Powder 200 g — 16.90 €: the best quantity-to-price ratio, our recommendation if you cook regularly.
- 1 kg format — 46.90 € and 2.5 kg — 109.90 €: for restaurants and heavy users. See also our HORECA guide.
Still hesitating? The Discovery Pack at 19.90 € lets you try before committing to a large format.
Going further
Savoury cooking is only one way in. Find all our ideas in our ube recipe hub, our 12 ways to use ube powder, and our guide what is ube to understand everything about the purple tuber of the Philippines.
Order Ube Powder 200 g — 16.90 € and start your first batch of purple gnocchi this weekend.
