Have you ever tried to peel a tree?
It’s not easy. You can just imagine trying to get that knife in there, sticking it in at the right angle to be able to peel off that thick layer of bark. Stab. Twist. Snap.
As silly as that seems, that’s how I feel when I try to peel yuca, often called cassava in English. Although it’s one of my favorite root vegetables, yuca comes with a thick bark covering that I do hate. And peeling off that hairy outer layer is about as appealing as trying to peel bark off a tree.
However, underneath you’ll find the creamy white skin of one of the best underground pleasures in Latin America.
What is yuca?
Yuca is a common tropical plant and source of food in many countries. In fact, the root, which is what we eat, is the third largest source of carbohydrates around the globe, and there’s a reason why so much of the world eats yuca. Yuca contains lots of calcium, phosphorus and vitamin C.
If you live in – or visit – rural tropical areas where yuca grows, you can have the unique pleasure of eating yuca pulled fresh from the ground. Some years back we lived in a small town in the Andes Mountains that had a huge garden … and yuca plants. It wasn’t my idea to plant yuca –it was the neighbor’s idea. Because to him, a vegetable garden without yuca wasn’t a vegetable garden at all.
So he planted yuca in our garden. I never watered it, rarely looked at it, and nearly forgot it was there. Thankfully, left alone, yuca grows quite well. If it didn’t, we’d never have experienced eating yuca freshly dug up from our yard. In about a year’s time we had large yuca trees that our other neighbors would eye.
They’d walk by on the street and call out to us, “Your yuca is ready.”
(Implying that if we didn’t rip it out of the ground and devour it, they would).
And also implying that those city folk knew nothing about yuca. Which was true.
Eating yuca
We needed the help of yet another neighbor to know what to do with the yuca plant. My husband was well acquainted with cooking yuca, but not digging it up from the garden himself. So that neighbor came by and dug around in the soil at the base of the plant until she came up with a bit of the root. Covered in the black earth of our garden, it didn’t seem too appealing at that point.
However, once we’d cleaned it up, peeled it, cut it, and dropped it into a pot of boiling water, we were feeling better. After a short ten minutes, the yuca was soft and we fished it out, piled a local cream and fresh white farmers cheese on it, and quickly became addicted to fresh yuca.
How to buy yuca in Colombia
If you don’t happen to have yuca growing in your front yard, you’ll need to buy it at a produce market or supermarket. What should you look for?
You want to make sure there’s no mold on the outside of it, which grows quickly in humid tropical climates. You also want to make sure that the inside flesh of the yuca doesn’t have any grey or black spots or veins running through it.
So you’re going to have to peek inside, which means cutting it open. Don’t feel bad about doing that – it’s your guarantee that the yuca is fresh enough to eat. In fact, if the yuca isn’t white all the way through, the grocer shouldn’t be selling it. Generally, they’ll have cut yuca on display so you can examine it to see how fresh it is.
Now that you’ve bought your fresh yuca, it’s time to peel it. As you can tell, the bark isn’t easy to get through. So when you’re peeling your yuca, please be careful. You don’t want the knife to slip under the pressure you’re exerting. I often depend on my husband’s expertise. A Latin American chef, he’s peeled many yucas in his day. I generally just leave the barky things on the kitchen counter until he gets around to peeling them.
How does my husband make a masterpiece of a difficult task? I decided to watch him closely to get the details.
How to peel yuca
Take a sharp pointy knife in hand. Point it at the yuca and carefully make a little slit in the bark all the way down from top to bottom.
Just as carefully, twist the blade so that it comes between the layer of bark and the ivory layer of yuca below. The layer of bark will pop up a bit – follow along the whole line of yuca doing that sticking-twisting-popping motion until you’ve lifted all the bark off.
Needless to say, that requires some practice. But believe me, there’s nothing like fresh peeled and boiled yuca, so I’m glad I learned (for those moments when my husband’s not available).
You can then cut the yuca in half, and then if you’d like it to boil even faster, you can cut it into half again. There’s a thick vein running down the middle that’s almost like a piece of stiff twine – you can remove it now or after boiling it.
How to cook yuca
You can boil or fry yuca. If you decide to fry it, you can use any fat you want – oil, pig fat, duck fat or any other kind.
As tasty as fried yuca is, I prefer to keep the calorie count down a bit and boil it. To boil it, bring a big pot of water to boil. Salt the water and pop the yuca in and bring the water back to a boil.
How long does it take to cook? That depends on how big the pieces are and how fresh the yuca is. Straight from the garden, it could be done in 10 minutes. However, here in Bogota I’ve boiled not-at-all-fresh yuca for 40 minutes.
Stick a fork in the middle to see how it’s doing. When it’s soft, fish it out of the water and let the excess water drip off before eating.
How should you eat yuca?
When you pull the yuca out of the pot, it’ll be steaming and soft and deliciously comforting. All I really need on top is butter or sour cream and grated cheese. Lots of both. Or an avocado salad. It’s also fantastic with guacamole and homemade Mexican salsa. Or chimichurri. Or anything else that has a good amount of flavor, since yuca is bland.
You can form cooked yuca into balls and fry them – try them filled with meat or cheese.
You can also freeze yuca at any stage – uncooked, cooked or in arepa form.
Yuca arepa recipe
However, if your yuca isn’t fresh, you may want to dress it up a bit. One of my favorite things to do with yuca that wasn’t as fantastic as I had hoped is to make yuca arepas.
Heat a griddle or large frying pan. Take your boiled yuca while it’s still warm and grate it with the large side of a grater. While it’s still warm, add salt and a bit of water and mix it with your hand to create an evenly homogenous dough. Depending on how soft your yuca is, this could take just a few minutes.
TIPS: To make the dough richer, add the milk of your choice, grated cheese, or a raw egg. If the yuca won’t come together in a compact dough, you can add wheat, yuca, or corn flour.
Grease the hot griddle and then form arepa patties in your hands, about the size of a modest hamburger. Set them on the hot griddle. Keep an eye on them and flip them when the bottom browns. Since the yuca is already cooked, you can cook them as long as you like, but at least until they’re brown on both sides and don’t fall apart when you lift them up. For an added touch, slip them in a hot oven for about 10 minutes and watch them puff up a bit. They’ll get crunchier on the outside but stay creamy on the inside.
Then you can eat them as is or split them open and add the filling you want – pork, beef, avocado, cheese or egg. Enjoy!
