Garri is commonly eaten in Nigeria. It is a granular flour obtained by processing the roots of freshly harvested cassava.
I'm going to show you all a step by step process of how I produced garri today. Please read on!
As earlier stated, Garri is produced from processing cassava. The cassava roots were first harvested. After harvesting them, they were peeled and washed. Next, we put them in a big rice bag and took it for grating. The cassava roots were grated into a mash. The mash was then put in a bag and placed in an adjustable press machine to remove the water completely. Once it is dry, a sieve is used to sieve the grated cassava into soft grains.
This is a wooden sieve which I used today. It is knitted and has little holes which the grated cassava passes through. There's a basin under it so the grain pours into the basin.
The dried mash becomes hard after pressing. It takes the shape of the bag in was put in. So you take out the dry mash and put it in the sieve. Using my hands, I crushed it into smaller pieces and as I kept crushing, the dry mash lump became a bit grainy.
There are photos below and they are numbered so you see the transition and progress of the sieving process.
I had a really hard time in the sieving process. It turned out that whoever grated the cassava didn't drain out water completely from the mash and we didn't know. This is because this time we left the cassava in the grating station and went back later to pick it thinking the work had been done properly, as usual.
When the mash is completely dried, sieving is very easy and fast. I spent about 5 hours trying to sieve just one bag of grated cassava. When I pressed the mash, there was still a little water coming out and it's not supposed to be so. This is why it took hours to finish the sieving process.
After the sieving process, the grain is fried using a big pot. It is either fried the way it is to give it a white colour or palm oil is added to it to give it the yellow colour.
While we fried the first time, we (my mum and I) had a challenge. Due to the fact that the mash wasn't dried completely, it made the grains stick together during frying. The fried garri had lumps instead of the normal grainy texture it is supposed to have.
I had to use a rubber filter to sieve the already fried garri so that the lumps could be selected out of the grains.
After this, I suggested we dry the sieved grains which was yet to be fried, under the sun. So we scooped the grains into trays and kept it in the sun.
After a while we started frying again and this time it turned out well.
This is how I spent my day.
All images are mine and were taken with my phone.
Thank you for reading.