Oca: The Ingredient Edit

Oca, small pastel-coloured tubers that can be cooked just as you would a potato. Introduced to English vegetable gardens in the 1830s, this unusual South American vegetable is ideally suited for the ever-drier growing conditions we are now experiencing in Europe. 

Cultivated over centuries and sometimes referred to as the ‘lost crop of the Incas’, the Oca has been selectively bred throughout the Andes, and is today’s most valuable crop in Peru & Bolivia … so not so ‘lost’ after all.  They are an excellent source of vitamin C, potassium and iron. Little known in the UK, nonetheless we are sure they will become more widely available and they are very easy to grow, so if you are a keen gardener do give them a go.   

We have had them in our polytunnels for the past five years, but they would grow equally well outside in a sheltered spot.  Buy your seed-tubers from The Real Seed Catalogue (you buy by colour not varietal); plant in the spring; be sure to protect them from frost as the weather turns; harvest in the winter.  Keep a few back for replanting as they multiply really well.  And as they are not related to potatoes, they are resistant to blight which is a real bonus.

They are funny nuggets, like little nobbly potatoes.  We favour using them raw in salads as their pretty colours are lost in cooking and they have a lovely light texture, a bit like radish - sweet, nutty and a touch earthy. The apricot and rose coloured varieties we grow have a distinct lemony taste.  The plant is related to wood sorrel, forming small dense clumps of leaves that are very pretty, succulent and minerally and in early summer are peppered with delicate yellow flowers, so if you don’t have a veg plot why not plant some in the flower bed.