Backyard Farming Forum
Bringing food production home

Quick shot of some cassava we dug up today.
First time I've tried to grow this, very impressed with the yield from 2 plants.

looks like a good haul, where are you located, I wonder if I could grow that in Perth Western Australia?

Is it a sweet or bitter one and how are you planning to detoxify it?

Also how do you propagate it?

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Sorry for the late reply, I keep having to get a new password to log on every time I visit and I dont get any notifications when there is a reply.

I'm in Townsville North Queensland.
This is the sweet one, once harvested (or at any time) just cut the stems to about 300mm in length and stick in a bucket of water till some roots develop or just stick it in the ground and water well.
Standard cooking will de-toxify it so remove peel, wash well, then either cut into chunks and boil and mash with heaps of butter or roll in butter and bake, really crisp on the outside and fluffy in the middle.
Some Philippino friends also make a very sweet cake from it that I must get the recipe for.

A very starchy root that is edible. Dont eat it raw as it contains cyanide but boiling will remove that from the sweet varieties.

Hello everyone.

I just wanted to note for you all that the problem with Cassava is mostly the cyanide. There are two chemicals in the tissue of the plant that become cyanide when the tissues are broken.

Boiling gets rid of some of it, and so does drying, but in traditional populations those who soak and ferment the tuber first of all tend to do best in the long term. Populations that just dry it and then cook it tend to have a higher rate of goiter. The peel is has the highest concentration of the chemicals you want to avoid so peeling is a great plan (those chemicals decrease as you go toward the center of the tuber).

If it is a small part of your diet, it probably isn't too much of a concern. The problems are much more prevalent in people with low-protein diets or are low in iodine or sulfur.

Simple overview of suggested methods:
https://www.uoguelph.ca/foodsafetynetwork/cassava

More in-depth analysis of processing methods and how much each one alone and in combination reduces final cyanide content:
http://www.fao.org/docrep/t0207e/t0207e08.htm

In studies of traditional methods, the people who soaked and fermented the tuber first of all had the least likelyhood of goiter and other illnesses in the long term. Boiling is okay, but not really that effective used alone. Soaking, fermenting, mashing, drying(especially in the sun) and boiling are all methods that have been used and combined to process it.

As long as it isn't your main food staple it probably won't be much of a problem. The worst effects occur in populations where intake of the less processed cassava is high, protein intake is low and people are defficient in sulfur and iodine. Not a bad idea to be well educated about it, though!

Basic overview on toxicity and suggested processing methods:
https://www.uoguelph.ca/foodsafetynetwork/cassava

Specific analysis of how different processing methods affect cyanide content:
http://www.fao.org/docrep/t0207e/t0207e08.htm

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