Cassava Flour: A Love Story

This article is written by my friend Marcus Lowther, a CrossFit coach and co-owner of CrossFit Tysons Corner in Vienna, Virginia. He tries to find the tastiest versions of common dishes while considering long-term health effects.

He’s seen plenty of food trends come and go during more than a decade involved in the CrossFit community. But a long-term dietary change he’s made is using cassava flour, often in place of traditional white flour. If you associate “healthy food” with sacrificing enjoyment, you’ll understand why he’s gone through a lot of trial and error with cassava flour. “With any new ingredient, you’ll find dishes that work well and some that should be left on the shelf,” Marcus says. “As long as you’re willing to experiment, your cooking will be that much more unique if you’re open to different types of foods.”

When You Love Sugar, But It Doesn’t Love You Back

Growing up, my mom gave my brother and me a choice—you can help cook or you can help clean. I loved sweets (and still love them), so to me the choice was obvious. Clean dirty dishes and wipe counters or make delicious cookies? Cookies it was. However, as a Black male adult, seeing my immediate and extended family accept getting “the sugar” (diabetes) as a rite of passage was painful. My dad, uncle, grandfather, grandmother, and countless other relatives have all had to deal with Type II diabetes. I still love cookies, but today I cannot in good conscience bake treats and cookies without at least trying to find a healthy alternative that still tastes good. 

Finding My Own Path To Health

Everyone’s interpretation of “healthy” is different. For me, it looks like a few criteria I think many people can agree with:

• Choosing simple ingredients and whole foods that use minimal processed ingredients.
• Reducing inflammatory foods and those that give you a bad reaction. This could be an immediate allergic reaction or dietary choices that exacerbate chronic conditions.
• Limiting sugar unless it’s a very special occasion.

With these ideas in mind, after leaving grad school and starting to define my own routines, I stumbled onto CrossFit. It was one of the only fitness approaches in the late 2000s that considered nutrition in its training methodology. It seemed like a novelty to me. I also liked that it sought to address health concerns like diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease that I saw afflicting my family. Early CrossFit promoted a paleo way of eating—lots of vegetables, meat, some fruit, nuts, and a limited amount of starches. These dietary recommendations have since relaxed a little, but this is why I first tried grain-free and gluten-free flour alternatives.

What Is Cassava Flour? And How Using It Complements My Fitness Goals

Cassava flour comes from the root of the cassava plant—a starchy, high-carbohydrate tuber that is similar to yams, taro, plantains, and potatoes. As a tuberous root vegetable, cassava is gluten, grain and nut-free, as well as vegan, vegetarian and paleo. The cassava root is also known as yuca or manioc. (You may know it from popular yuca fries.) It is native to South America, and it has become a staple in African diets since being introduced by Portuguese traders in the 16th Century. As a person with African roots, this gives me a connection to eating like my ancestors. 

It was difficult to find gluten-free flour when I started CrossFit and attempted my first 30-day paleo challenge in 2008. Now these flours are everywhere. For example, corn, cassava, and teff flours are worth trying to avoid gluten and give your food a different flavor and texture. Cassava flour has become my personal day-to-day flour to try in a variety of recipes.

Today, I use cassava flour for three main reasons:

• Absence of gluten—Cassava flour doesn’t contain gluten, a substance many people have reasons to avoid. If you don’t have to make a separate dish for every food sensitive guest that comes to your table, it’s that much less work.
• Recipes tend to be lower in sugar—Paleo-friendly cassava flour recipes tend to use less sugar and sweeteners.
• It’s fun to experiment—I’m just a home baker who enjoys testing new variations on old favorites. I don’t need to reinvent the many variations of butter, white flour, and sugar that professional bakers have already perfected.

Easiest To Substitute When A Recipe Doesn’t Call Exclusively For White Flour

Cassava flour gives a spongy, cakey texture in baking. It adds a bit of sweetness in batters and can give a slight crunch when cooked at high temperatures quickly. Although in my experience, it will never get completely crispy.

For minimal effect on texture and flavor, it’s generally easiest to substitute cassava flour into dishes that don’t call for a lot of white flour. For example, corn muffins or corn bread, which already call for corn meal and another flour. Using cassava flour in these recipes will give a touch of sweetness without many side effects. In contrast, baking a traditional loaf of bread by swapping cassava flour for multiple cups of white flour will probably leave you disappointed.

My Best And Worst Kitchen Experiments

Some of my favorite preparations for cassava flour include making corn muffins, onion rings, and scallion pancakes. It also gives brownies a moist, fudgy texture. When I’m trying to eat in a more balanced manner, my rule is that sweets are okay as long as you make them yourself. It takes away the ease of just buying something at the corner store.

Best cassava flour success—fudgy brownies. For fudgy brownies, all you need is cassava flour, cocoa baking powder, oil, eggs, chocolate chips, and some sugar. Mix them together and you have a great fudgy treat. In the linked recipe, I replace the almond flour with cassava flour.

Worst cassava flour attempt—olive oil fried chicken. This just didn’t come together for me. Fried chicken should be cooked at high heat to get nice and crisp. Unfortunately olive oil is usually better at lower temperatures and not for deep frying. The cassava flour didn’t get crispy enough on the outside. It also added a sweetness that wasn’t quite right for fried chicken, which I usually prefer to be spicy.