Taking Root: Cassava Claims Its Place On The American Table

By Dorothy Irwin

Credit: Todd Coleman

A cassava is an ugly-beautiful thing. Formidable. For years I saw the gnarly brown root vegetable at different markets in New York City, where I live, and I'll confess I was a little intimidated. Surely it would take some special tool, one I didn't have in my kitchen, to remove the bark-like peel, which, on most cassavas I've seen, has been coated in a disconcerting layer of wax.

I was fascinated to discover that I'd actually been eating this vegetable all my life, in the form of tapioca—the pure starch filtered out of juice extracted from the cassava, and further processed into a fine powder, coarser granules, or the round pearls found in tapioca pudding. The gap between the pearls in the pudding I'd grown up with and the vegetable I saw at the market seemed too vast to comprehend. So, I decided to connect the dots by cooking.

First I determined what cassava is, exactly: a starchy, tuberous root native to Central and South America, typically sold at a size of six to ten inches in length and two to three inches in diameter. I'd seen it referred to as yuca and manioc, and I learned that its many other aliases—aipim, mandioca, and macaxeira in Brazil alone; mihogo in Swahili-speaking Africa; kappa in South India; singkong in parts of Indonesia—reflect its distribution across a vast portion of the globe. The plant that produces the tuber, Manihot esculenta, is a woody shrub that grows quickly and vigorously—a sort of miracle plant, really. In tropical conditions with natural rainfall, it requires no irrigation, and its roots can be harvested year-round; unharvested, they can remain underground for an astonishing three years without spoiling. For all those reasons, cassava is ubiquitous throughout the tropics and a staple food for, by some estimates, 15 percent of the world's population.

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This article was first published in Saveur in Issue #136

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Comments (3)

by CRISPROOT on 2011-03-02

Cassava is such a great root but sadly most US people don't know about it or its benefits and how to prepare it. CrispRoot has always been proud to be the first company to introduce cassava chips to the American market but we couldn't be happier seeing you help educate people! Thanks for the great article :-)

by IMEGAHAN on 2012-01-09

With the advent of gluten free diets, awareness and consciousness, cassava (especially in the form of tapioca) is growing in awareness, acceptance and appreciation in the US diet. Also cooks are growing more savvy, appreciating techniques and delights offered by other cultures. Recipes for authentic P�o de Queijo, for example, abound on the internet. Some offer simplified technique, while others more complex. Of course to be authentic one never need add yeast, or wheat flour-- nor would or should one. To do so is to adulterate in an attempt to Americanize, and to offer a substandard version, that should have never left the drawing board of anyone dense enough to conceive it.

by DENBROWNING@HOTMAIL.COM on 2013-03-20

Dorothy: Congratulations!!! What a great, informative article. I love cassava... Actually, it has always been present at my table. I am Brazilian!
I love your article so much that I am sharing it in one of my blog posts. There is only one dish made from sour tapioca starch that was not mentioned in your article: Tapioca crepes-- or simply tapioca as it is known in Northeast Brazil. Maybe because you were not aware of great native dish. Anyway, kudos!