Monday, August 31, 2009

3 Tips to Make Perfectly Mashed Yucca



I've always thought of yucca as being a very exotic thing. Not only is it not part of the average American diet but it also has some very strange textural characteristics which make it very weird. Yucca, similar to a potato, is often eaten boiled and mashed. Because it is VERY high in starch, if you give the yucca mash a good mix, it becomes very sticky and gooey. This paste can be very good for various things, but I've found, I often end up with this sticky paste, when all I wanted was mashed yucca.

Here are 3 quick tips for getting a good mashed yucca.



1. Peel completely. Remove the hard outer skin as well as the pinky underskin. The delicate white inside will be less fibrous then the outer layers.



2. Boil the shit out of it. Cut the yucca into disks or chunks and boil in water. I always boil potatoes until you can put a knife into it, but I've found, you have to boil yucca longer. It starts to break up in the water, but it will still be hard inside. Keep boiling it until it falls apart easily to the touch. This means the fiber has broken down a bit.


Potato Ricer: image courtesy of Exlibris

3. Use a potato ricer to mash the yucca. A ricer helps separate the hard fiber from the softer mash, leaving you with a perfectly fluffy pile of mashed yucca. I know you may not have a potato ricer, its sort of an unnecessary kitchen item. However, once every decade, it comes in handy, and this is one of those occasions.

5 comments:

Janice said...

How does it taste Andrea???

danny dineen said...

Have you ever seen Incident at Loch Ness where Werner Herzog cooks Yucca for Jeff Goldbloom and is concerned about poisoning his guests?

Anonymous said...

@Janice: I've eaten mashed yucca at Mo's NY Grill and it tastes like lightly sweetened mashed potatoes. There's a natural butteriness to the yucca that potatoes don't have. As far as texture, the mashed yucca I had was not as smooth as mashed potatoes; it had a slightly chunkier, thicker texture to it.

TrendWatcher said...

@Anonymous:I was reading the Mo's NY Grill Menu and was unsure if I'd like the mashed yucca that comes with the skirt steak and a Google search led me to your comment. THANK YOU! It sounds like they know what they're doing and I'll love it!

Unknown said...

Hi, I just had some mashed yuca at a brasilian restaurant with coconut milk poured over top. The chef told me he blended it with some oil and this stuff:

http://www.saucenspice.com/images/products/detail/Goya-Sazon_con_Azafran_1oz.jpg

I found half a packet did the trick, really good for saffron rice too!