Cassava-based dishes

In some parts of the world (chiefly in Africa and some Southeast Asian nations like Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines), cassava leaves are also cooked and eaten as a vegetable.

Besides casabe bread, it is prepared as a side dish – boiled, covered with raw onion rings and sizzling garlic-infused olive oil.

Cuban buñuelos, a local variation of a traditional Spanish fritter (similar to the French beignet), is made with cassava and sweet potato instead of flour.

[5] Cassava (Haitian Creole: kasav) (French: Cassave) is a popular starch and common staple in Haiti where it is often eaten as part of a meal or occasionally by itself.

[citation needed] As an alternative to side dishes like French fries, arepitas de yuca are consumed, which are deep-fried buttered lumps of shredded cassava with egg and anis.

Serernata de Bacalao, salted cod fish mixed with cassava and other tropical root vegetables, green bananas, cabbage, chayote, hard boiled eggs, and avocado.

Rusiao de yuca like pasteles are made from grated cassava that has been dehydrated, toasted, then notably rehydrate with coconut milk into masa and seasoned with anis, mashed or finely chopped chicharrón, oregano among other ingredients.

Rellenos de yuca are fitters made with boiled mashed cassava, milk, eggs, cornstarch, butter, and filled with meat, cheese, seafood, or vegetable and fried.

Pastelillos de yuca are basically empanadas made with tapioca, milk, butter or lard, annatto, eggs, vinegar or vodka.

The grated cassava is rinsed and pressed through woven "bammy bags" (the runoff of which contains cyanide and is very toxic to humans and livestock) and fried into flat round "cakes".

(This observation is based on Farming Systems Research conducted in Jamaica in 1990 under the auspices of the Jamaican Agricultural Development Foundation and the University of Florida in Gainesville.)

In The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands, cassava is made into a bread, or is eaten boiled, either alone or with sweet potatoes, cabbage, plantains, and meat.

Traditional "bread" is made by grinding cassava root, blending it with water (and sometimes coconut shavings) and frying it on large solid metal grills.

The Caribs have multiple small stations along Dominica's main highway where locals cook cassava bread in open-air kitchens for onlookers and tourists.

It is also stir-fried with other root vegetables and onions, coconut milk, and either salt fish or smoked herring to create a dish commonly called "Oil-down".

The cassava is normally bought frozen, washed through a cotton cloth, squeezed dry, then mixed with egg, butter, nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla and sugar.

It is a combination boiled eggs, fish and/or pig tail, with a number of ground foods such as cassava, green plantains, yams, sweet potatoes, and tomato sauce.

Another typical Honduran dish is yuca con chicharrón, which is served with lemon-dripped raw cabbage and diced tomatoes, topped with chicharrones (pork rinds).

[10] In Brazil and Portugal, a crunchy meal called farinha de mandioca (Portuguese pronunciation: [faˈɾĩɲɐ dʒi mɐ̃diˈɔkɐ], "manioc flour") of varying coarseness is produced for use as a condiment, a base for farofa, or a stand-alone side dish.

Farinha de mandioca and tapioca are the most important caloric staples of the Indigenous peoples of Brazil who already practiced agriculture when Europeans colonized the country, so for Brazilians manioc would be included in its equivalent of the North American three sister crops or the Mesoamerican milpa.

Fried cassava is a common snack food in Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and several Central American countries including Panama.

The process of making it involves peeling and grating the tuber root, removing juice from pulp, sifting, then baking the crumbs on a skillet into a thin white wafer-like crust, before being dried further in the sun.

It is also processed into a flour and used to make chipa, a name for a type of bread made with queso paraguayo, milk, butter, and eggs (dairy and chicken having been introduced by the European settlers in the 16th and 17th centuries).

Cassava is an essential ingredient in Venezuelan food, and can be found stewed, roasted or fried as side dish, sometimes with cheese, butter, or margarine.

Venezuelan casabe is made by roasting ground cassava spread out as meter wide pancake over a hot surface (plancha) or any flattop grill.

In December 2024, the practices and meanings associated with the preparation and consumption of casabe, were recognized by UNESCO as an expression of Venezuelan traditional cuisine and Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

In addition to the methods described above, local residents fry thin slices of the cassava root, resulting in a crunchy snack similar in look and taste to potato chips.

In the provinces of Bandundu and Bas-Congo, in Western Democratic Republic of the Congo manioc root is pounded into a paste, fermented and cooked in banana or other forest leaves.

[25] On the island of Mindanao, salbaro or salvaro is a snack made from thin fried sheets of cassava drizzled with caramelized fruit syrup.

Some preparations call for the use of saffron to make tapioca yellowish in color, with or without adding peppercorn and scraped coconut directly to the boiling pot itself once the water is near fully evaporated.