Chibwantu

the Zambian maize drink sweetened with pounded munkoyo root, lightly fermented, cloudy and faintly tart

Origin: Lusaka & Zambia

From the journey of Corn.

Chibwantu is a maize drink that is sweetened without sugar, and the agent is a root. Dried munkoyo root, from shrubs of the genus Rhynchosia gathered in the miombo woodland, is pounded and steeped with cooled maize porridge, and enzymes in the root convert the starch into sugars over a few hours. The result is cloudy, sweet, very faintly sour, and mildly effervescent. Nothing is added to make it so. It is not the same thing as the alcoholic maize beers of the region, though it is related to them and the boundary is a matter of time. Left a day it is a soft drink and children drink it; left several days it ferments further and becomes mildly alcoholic. Households make it at the sweet stage and drink it within a day or two, and it is offered to guests, taken to the fields, and given to children as food rather than refreshment. The names shift across the country and the two commonest, chibwantu and munkoyo, are used almost interchangeably, with munkoyo more often naming the root and chibwantu the drink. Both are Bemba and Lala words from the Copperbelt and central provinces. The root is gathered rather than farmed, which has become a live question: demand from the towns has put pressure on wild stands, and the plant is slow to re-establish. It is one of a number of Zambian foods that depend on a woodland the country is losing.

Ingredients

  • 250 g white maize meal
  • 2.5 litres water
  • 80 g dried munkoyo root, or 4 tbsp malted barley or sorghum flour as a substitute
  • 1 pinch salt

Method

  1. If using munkoyo root, rinse it, then pound or crush it and soak in 400ml of warm water for an hour. Keep both the root and the liquid.
  2. Mix the maize meal with 500ml of the cold water to a smooth slurry with no lumps.
  3. Bring the remaining 1.6 litres of water to the boil with the pinch of salt.
  4. Pour in the slurry, whisking hard, and cook at a gentle simmer for twenty-five to thirty minutes, stirring often, until you have a thin, smooth porridge that no longer tastes of raw meal.
  5. Take it off the heat and let it cool to lukewarm. This matters: the enzymes in the root are destroyed by heat, and adding the root to hot porridge will give you sour porridge and no sweetness at all.
  6. Stir the soaked root and its liquid into the cooled porridge. Cover with a cloth and leave at room temperature.
  7. After six to eight hours it will have turned noticeably sweet and slightly tart, and may fizz faintly when stirred. Taste it: this is the point at which chibwantu is ready.
  8. Strain out the root fibres. Chill and drink within two days, stirring before pouring since it separates. Left longer at room temperature it continues to ferment and turns alcoholic.

Notes

Temperature decides everything. Lukewarm, not hot, or the conversion never starts. Munkoyo root is sold dried in Zambian and southern African shops and online; malted barley or sorghum flour is the closest widely available substitute and works on the same enzymatic principle, though the flavour is maltier and less floral. The drink separates on standing, which is normal.

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