How Garri Turn To Eba With Hot Water But Not With Cold Water

Eba

Garri is the most common carbohydrate food in Nigeria and many other African countries. It is made from cassava root. It is dry, cripsy, creamy white or yellow in colour granular flour (semolina) with gelatinized starch.

Processing Garri

Cassava root contains a lot of starch, water, cyanogenic compounds (dangerous to humans), etc and most of which are removed during processing. The processing techniques vary from place to place but involve peeling, washing, grating, fermenting (optional), sieving and then roasting. Oil may be added to improve its taste but this reduce how soon it will go bad.

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The processing enhances its preservation properties and makes it edible and safe to eat. The roasting makes it precooked food for eating, soaking in cold water or making eba (dough) by adding hot water and turning with a spatula. The dry garri and soak garri can be enjoyed with a variety of other ingredients like sugar, groundnut, milk and tea, etc while the eba is enjoyed with a variety of soups such as stew, egusi soup, owho soup and banga soup amongst others.

Garri And Hot Water (Eba)

People always ask what is the mechanism behind hot water turning garri into a dough (eba). Let us take a look at garri.

When garri is added to hot water, the garri absorb the water. The granules rehydrate and begin to expand. Also, the heat breaks down the gelatinized starch in the garri. This stretches the starch. The hotter the water, the longer the water remains untouched, the more the gelatinize starch will stretch and all attain their full stretch. It is the starch that now makes the garri turn into eba.

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The stretch starch comes in between garri granules and forces them to come together. Starch properties such as water absorption capacity after gelatinization underpin their rheological and textural behaviour. This explains the pasting properties of eba.

The reason too much hot water make eba to be soft is because the starch is light. It is not thick to bring all the garri particle close together. There is gap between each garri particle. The harder eba is because the garri particle are too close to each other as there is not enough enough hot water to breakdown all the starch.

Garri And Cold Water

On the other hand, cold water has no strong effect on starch. It does not even have the strength to enter into garri immediately to make it expand. It does so gradually. Very little starch stretches and this is why garri in cold water stick together only a little after many minutes.