What Is Huacatay? Peru's Black Mint That Isn't a Mint

That jar is probably why you’re here. Green-black paste, BLACK MINT on the label, no idea what you bought. If you made our ají verde, you bought it on our say-so, which makes this page overdue.

Huacatay is the aromatic Andean herb that gives Peru’s green sauces their whole personality, from the crema on a pollería table to ocopa arequipeña. Whatever the jar says, huacatay is not a mint. It’s a marigold, and that’s why the swap most people reach for fails.

What is huacatay, exactly

Huacatay is Tagetes minuta, a species in the daisy and marigold family, Asteraceae. The USDA’s germplasm database files it there under English names like wild marigold and Mexican marigold, and logs huacatay itself as the Quechua name from Peru. The Diccionario de americanismos, the Spanish academies’ reference for regional words, gives the same botany and describes a herb up to about 50 cm tall, with toothed aromatic leaves and yellow-to-orange flowers, used as a seasoning. The word is current in Ecuador, Peru and northern Chile.

Huacatay is an Andean herb, native to the Andes and the temperate South America around them. Peru is where huacatay got famous in a kitchen.

Why is huacatay called black mint?

The name huacatay travels under in English is black mint, and it’s real. It’s printed on the jar, and PromPerú, Peru’s own tourism institution, uses it for English readers, glossing the herb as “huacatay (Peruvian black mint).”

Black mint gets the register right. Green, pungent, an herb and not a chile. It gets the plant wrong. Huacatay is a marigold, genus Tagetes, nowhere near the spearmint in your crisper drawer.

That matters at the stove, not just on the label. Peru does have a highland mint of its own: muña, Minthostachys mollis, a true member of the mint family. Huacatay isn’t muña, isn’t related to muña, and isn’t related to your spearmint either. So when a recipe tells you to sub in mint because the jar says mint, know what you’re doing. You aren’t making a weaker version of this sauce, you’re making a different one.

What huacatay tastes like, and how little you need

PromPerú calls huacatay the quintessential Peruvian aromatic herb and warns that it is bastante invasiva: barely a sprig is enough to flavor an entire pot of stew. El Comercio’s recipe desk lands in the same place independently, in a pollo en salsa de huacatay that uses one branch of fresh huacatay for a whole chicken sauce, then pulls the herb out before the aderezo, the seasoning base, goes in the blender.

Two Peruvian sources, one message. Use less huacatay than you think, whatever form you buy.

To us huacatay lands somewhere between mint and basil, with something greener and more resinous than either underneath. Open the jar and put your nose in it; you’ll have your own sentence in two seconds.

What dishes use huacatay

Ocopa arequipeña, the dish that’s most about huacatay

Ocopa arequipeña is Arequipa’s creamy green sauce of dried ají mirasol (the sun-dried form of ají amarillo), huacatay, onion, peanuts, milk, queso fresco and animal crackers, poured over boiled potatoes with hard-boiled egg and olives. Note what ocopa carries. The peanuts, the milk and cheese, and the wheat in the animal crackers are structure, not garnish. The hard-boiled egg is the garnish, and it’s on every plate.

PromPerú traces ocopa’s roots to pre-Hispanic times, when the people of Arequipa were already cooking with huacatay and ají. In 2025, the state news agency Andina reported that Indecopi recognized ocopa as an Especialidad Tradicional Garantizada, only the third Peruvian preparation to earn it, crediting more than 30 years of unbroken ingredients and technique and a recipe consolidated in the late 1990s by Arequipa’s picanteras, the women who run the city’s traditional picanterías. El Comercio, on the same news, names huacatay fresco among the classic inputs behind the honor.

Build one yourself below. The huacatay is the tap that changes the color.

The pollería crema

PromPerú names huacatay as one of the components behind the incomparable flavor of pollo a la brasa, Peru’s charcoal-rotisserie chicken. That green sauce by the fries is where most of us met huacatay without learning its name; our ají verde recipe teaches it in full.

Andean cooking: lawa, pachamanca, uchucuta

Huacatay goes into lawa, a thick soup of fresh corn, fava beans and dried yellow ají. In pachamanca, the hot-stone earth oven feast, huacatay seasons the meat alongside chincho and muña. And it goes into uchucuta, an Andean chile sauce ground with peanuts and culantro on the batán, the pre-Hispanic grinding stone: a base slab and a crescent-shaped rocker worked until things become paste.

How to buy huacatay in the US

• Jarred huacatay paste. The default, and what most diaspora kitchens including ours reach for. Inca’s Food and Peru Food both sell a 7.5 oz glass jar labeled “Huacatay – Black Mint Paste,” carried by Walmart, Amazon and specialty importers; a 12 oz jar exists. The printed panel reads black mint, salt, citric acid and sodium benzoate.
• Frozen leaves. 12 oz bags in the freezer aisle of Latino supermarket chains.
• Dried leaf. Sold by spice merchants as Peruvian black mint leaf.
• Fresh. Marginal here: seed sellers, specialty nurseries, or a pot on a warm windowsill. Not a produce-aisle item.

The ocopa build Indecopi protected specifies huacatay fresco, which is worth knowing. To us the jar is the honest default, because it’s what most of us cook with, and it works.

Huacatay substitutes, ranked honestly

Same rule we use for ají amarillo substitutes: start with the real thing, and label everything under it a compromise.

1. Fresh huacatay. What the tradition specifies.
2. Frozen leaves. Texture goes; flavor is the point anyway.
3. Jarred paste. Concentrated. Go under and climb up, and don’t trust any spoons-per-sprig conversion, ours included. There isn’t one.
4. Dried leaf. A dried herb is a dried herb. Thinnest of the four real forms.
5. None of the above. Then say the true thing: there’s no huacatay substitute, only covers. Cilantro with a little mint makes a good green sauce that is not this one.

Find the jar once, use half as much as you planned, and the whole Peruvian pantry opens behind it.

Questions, answered

What is huacatay?

Huacatay is an aromatic Andean herb used as a seasoning in Peru, Ecuador and northern Chile. Botanically it is Tagetes minuta, a marigold in the daisy family (Asteraceae), and its leaves flavor ocopa arequipeña, the green cremas of Peru's pollerías, and Andean dishes like lawa and pachamanca. In English it is sold as black mint.

Is huacatay a mint?

No. Huacatay is a marigold, genus Tagetes, in the daisy family Asteraceae. Peru does have a true highland mint, muña (Minthostachys mollis), and it sits in a different family entirely. Black mint is a real, widely used English name for huacatay, used by PromPerú itself, but it is not botany.

What does huacatay taste like?

To us huacatay lands somewhere between mint and basil, with something greener and more resinous than either underneath. That is our palate, not a sourced tasting note. Open the jar and put your nose in it, and you will have your own sentence in two seconds.

How much huacatay should I use?

Less than you think. PromPerú calls huacatay bastante invasiva and says a single sprig is enough to flavor a whole pot of stew; Lima's El Comercio uses one branch of fresh huacatay for an entire chicken sauce. Whatever form you have, start under and climb up, because no reliable paste-to-fresh conversion exists.

What can I substitute for huacatay?

Nothing truly replaces huacatay. In order of preference: fresh huacatay, frozen huacatay leaves, jarred huacatay paste, dried huacatay leaf. If you have none of those four, cilantro with a touch of mint is a cover, not a clone, and it makes a good sauce that is not this one. Spearmint alone is not a stand-in, because huacatay is a marigold and not a mint.

Where can I buy huacatay in the US?

The paste is what most diaspora kitchens, ours included, reach for. It is sold in 7.5 oz glass jars labeled "Huacatay – Black Mint Paste" by importers like Inca's Food and Peru Food, and stocked by Walmart, Amazon and specialty importers. Frozen huacatay leaves come in 12 oz bags at Latino supermarket chains, dried leaf is sold by spice merchants, and fresh huacatay is mostly a seed-seller and home-garden proposition.

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