Recipe · Drink · Lima and criolla cooking
Chicha morada
Peru’s purple soft drink: purple corn infused with pineapple, apple, cinnamon and cloves, sweetened and sharpened with lime. Ready to drink or as a concentrate.
- About 2 litres ready to drink, or 1 litre of concentrate to dilute
- 1 hr 15 min of preparation, then the cooling (estimate)
- Easy
- Vegetarian, judging by the ingredients
Chicha morada is the purple drink that accompanies meals in Peru: an infusion of purple corn, fruit and spices, sweetened and sharpened with lime. Unlike chicha de jora, it is not fermented and contains no alcohol.
Purple corn
Purple corn covers varieties of maize with purple kernels, grown mainly in the Andes of Peru and Bolivia, according to Wikipedia. It is sold dried, as whole cobs, in Latin American grocery shops. It is the whole cob that colours the water.
One preparation, three forms
Wikipedia describes three ways of drinking chicha morada in Peru: homemade, with cobs boiled with pineapple peel, pieces of quince, cinnamon and cloves, then sweetened and given lime once cold; as a powder to dilute, made from sugar and flavourings; or in industrial bottles. This recipe follows the first, with two uses: a drink ready to drink, or a concentrate that takes up less room in the fridge and is diluted when serving.
Our version
Measure the volume obtained after the infusion: it is what lets you measure out the sugar, because evaporation varies. It is a refreshment, not a remedy: sweeten it to your taste.
Ingredients
The final volume depends on evaporation during cooking: it is measured, not calculated. The quantities are therefore not recalculated automatically.
About 2 litres ready to drink, or 1 litre of concentrate to dilute
Estimated preparation time
- Active time
- 15 minutes
- Cooking
- 45 to 60 minutes of simmering
- Resting
- 1 to 2 hours to cool, in the fridge
- Total
- 1 hr 15 min of preparation, then the cooling
Techniques: Infusing.
To serve
Tick off the ingredients as you go: the boxes are remembered on this device.
Useful equipment
- A large 4-litre saucepan
- A fine sieve
- A measuring jug
- Glass bottles or carafes
Method
- Rinse the purple corn cobs in cold water. Put them in the saucepan with 2.5 litres of water, the pineapple peel and core, the apple, the cinnamon and the cloves.
- Bring to the boil, then lower the heat and simmer uncovered for 45 minutes: the water turns dark purple, almost black, and the corn kernels wrinkle.
- Strain through the fine sieve, pressing the fruit lightly. Measure the liquid obtained with the measuring jug and note it down: this is your unsweetened decoction.
- For mazamorra morada, take out 1 litre of decoction now, without sugar or lime.
- Sweeten the rest while it is hot: start with 60 g, stir until dissolved, taste and add 20 g at a time if needed.
- For a drink ready to drink, top up with drinking water to about 2 litres. For a concentrate, simmer for another 15 to 20 minutes, until about 1 litre is left, and dilute it when serving with the same amount of cold water.
- Cool quickly: divide the drink between shallow containers or plunge the saucepan into cold water, then put it in the fridge within the hour.
- When serving, add the lime juice, taste, and serve well chilled, with a few dice of fruit.
Signs of success
- The decoction is a deep purple and smells of spice and cooked fruit, with no taste of burnt corn.
- The final drink is sweet without being syrupy, and the lime makes it lively: without lime, it tastes flat.
- The concentrate, diluted with the same amount of water, tastes the same as the ready-to-drink version.
Precautions
- Drinking water only, including for diluting the drink and for ice cubes.
- The fresh fruit added when serving is cut on a clean board.
Allergens identified
No major allergen in the list of ingredients.
No major allergen in this list of ingredients; check the list for concentrated products.
Always check the labels of the products you buy (sauces, stocks, chilli pastes).
Variations and tips
- With a quince, as in the preparation described by Wikipedia, instead of the apple.
- Sweetened with chancaca, unrefined cane sugar, for a more caramel taste.
Reasonable substitutions
- Purple corn powder or shop-bought concentrate: quicker, but the taste depends on the product; read the list of ingredients (sugar, acidifiers, flavourings).
Storage
- Cooled drink or concentrate: in the fridge, below 5 °C. For a homemade preparation, the rule for leftovers applies: in the fridge within one to two hours of cooking, to be eaten within 48 hours or frozen.
Going further
Sources and dates
2 sources
Prices, opening hours and rules change: every piece of information cited links to its source, with the date it was consulted.
Figures and rules cited
- in the fridge, below 5 °C: Storing meat, poultry, fish, seafood and leftovers (Switzerland) . The FSVO also asks you not to refreeze food that has been thawed.
Official source: FSVO, Hygiène et aliments (food hygiene, in French) (new tab) · consulted on 3 October 2026 - in the fridge within one to two hours of cooking, to be eaten within 48 hours or frozen: Cooling and keeping cooked leftovers (United Kingdom) . The same source asks you to thaw food in the fridge and to eat thawed food within 24 hours.
Official source: GOV.UK (Food Standards Agency), cooling, freezing and defrosting food safely (18 December 2017) (new tab) , published on 18 December 2017 · consulted on 3 October 2026
Sources consulted
- Wikipedia (Spanish), Chicha morada (homemade, powdered, industrial) (new tab) (consulted on 3 October 2026)
- Wikipedia (Spanish), Maíz morado (new tab) (consulted on 3 October 2026)
How we choose and date our information: our method. Has something changed? Let us know.