The amazing chuño, also called tunta or moraya, is a freeze-dried potato from the Andes that is virtually weightless and lasts a long, long time.
“It can be stored for over twenty years, it will never go bad it will never rot”, says Jan Brack Faura, Mater’s Director of Projects. “And It has more calcium and iron than rice and wheat.”
It is a natural process, at high altitudes (above 3.800 m), which involves a combination of freezing the product and lowering pressure, removing the ice by sublimation. At night these varieties are exposed to very low temperatures, during the day they absorb the intense sunlight and at night they freeze again, for about a week.
The colour difference is that the white (Moraya, using usually the more bitter potatoes) is shielded from the sun during the day and washed at the end.
“This is very important. It has been a year of great lack of rain, of scarcity, and this is what will save us and sustain us“, reminds Cleto Cusipaucar,
partner farmer of the Kajllaraccay community.
“To eat it, you just make a soup and rehydrate it, or you can also grate it.” Or you make a cracker of it like at
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