How to Make Yuca Flour (Cassava Flour or Cativia)

En Español Recipe ↆ Video ↆ

Why we ❤️ it

We already have a recipe for cativía (or catibía) in our collection, so this may be confusing. More on that below...

If you live in the Dominican Republic, this may not be something you'd ever need to make at home, since we can use fresh yuca, or buy harina de yuca in supermarkets, but if you can't find it so easily, be heartened that making yuca flour is much easier than you might think.

What is catibía/yuca flour?

Let me start by clarifying what cativía is: Dominicans also use the name for empanadas de yuca, but cativía is, in fact, the name for cassava flour (also known as tapioca flour) made from the yuca root (cassava root). It has a mild flavor and can be made with a course of fine texture depending on the intended use.

Yuca flour has its own attributes and cannot substitute regular wheat flour in most dishes, but its neutral flavor lends itself to savory, and sweet dishes.

Yuca (a starchy root vegetable) is one of our favorite tubers, and you can learn more about yuca and see more yuca recipes.

Health benefits of cassava flour

Homemade yuca flour is certified gluten-free and grain-free. So if you're celiac or have gluten sensitivity and are searching for great gluten-free flours, this might be a great choice to experiment with.

It can be the base for many meatless and vegan dishes and is perfect for people allergic to nut flours and people on a paleo diet.

You can see its nutritional information, including vitamins, dietary fiber, and minerals below.

Cassava flour and yuca empanadas.

How to use yuca flour

You can make yuca empanadas, and we have a cassava cake recipe we published long ago that is made with yuca flour, so you can try that one too.

Prior to dehydrating it, you can use it to make casabe (cassava bread).

About this tapioca flour recipe

So, if you're asking yourself what the point is of making this by hand, other than a clumsy attempt at Luddism or misguided purism (after all, cassava flour is available in supermarkets), the answer is no: I have not fallen for some sort of culinary prescriptivism - this is an entirely practical matter. Let me explain...

The purpose of this recipe, or how-to, if you will, is to make another attempt at simplifying the process of making yuca empanadas, and, having taught you how to make cassava flour at home, you can make catibia empanadas at home with an ingredient that is far more durable than fresh yuca.

Buen provecho!

History of cativía

First, cativía is part of our Taino heritage. It was an important part of their diet, and they used it to make Casabe (for which they used slightly damp cativia before it dried completely). We are lucky that colonial writers paid attention to this and wrote about it. As a result, we have a pretty good idea about the importance of this ingredient and how it was prepared.

Here are a few things about cativía (also catibía [1] ): Making it during pre-Columbian times was very labor-intensive, especially because the variety of yuca widely available at the time had a high toxin content that was eliminated by the cativia-making process. The process of squeezing the liquid out of the yuca (which is also how most yuca-based dishes are made) was needed back then to eliminate these toxins [2]. For other yuca-based dishes, other methods like fermentation were also used. In the Dominican Republic, we are lucky that the yuca we buy practically anywhere is non-toxic and can be cooked however we wish.

Frying wasn't part of the Taino culinary repertoire, so the fried empanadas we know now could not have come from their culture. That came later, and it's probably one of the first examples of "criollo" cuisine, merging a Taino product with a dish and cooking method that came with either the conquistadors, enslaved Africans, or both.

Catibía (or whatever is called locally) is used in Africa, Brazil, Venezuela and several other countries. It is used to make cassava breads, cakes, pancakes, as a thickening agent, and many other ways.