Tapioca

Tapioca (Portuguese pronunciation: [tapiˈɔkɐ]) is a starch extracted from cassava root (Manihot esculenta). This species is native to the North Region of Brazil, but spread throughout South America. The plant was carried by Portuguese and Spanish explorers to most of the West Indies, and the continents of Africa and Asia, including the Philippines and Taiwan. It is now cultivated worldwide.

A staple food in many world regions, tapioca is used as a thickening agent in various foods.

Tapioca is derived from the word tipi'óka, its name in the Tupí language spoken by natives when the Portuguese first arrived in the Northeast Region of Brazil around 1707. This Tupí word refers to the process by which the cassava starch is made edible.

Tapioca is one of the purest forms of starch food, and the production varies from region to region.

The cassava plant has either red or green branches with blue spindles on them. The root of the green-branched variant requires treatment to remove linamarin, a cyanogenic glycoside occurring naturally in the plant, which otherwise may be converted into cyanide.Konzo (also called mantakassa) is a paralytic disease associated with several weeks of almost exclusive consumption of insufficiently processed bitter cassava.

In the north and northeast of Brazil, traditional community-based production of tapioca is a by-product of manioc flour production from cassava roots. In this process, the manioc (after treatment to remove toxicity) is ground to a pulp with a small hand- or diesel-powered mill. This masa is then squeezed to dry it out. The wet masa is placed in a long woven tube called a tipiti. The top of the tube is secured while a large branch or lever is inserted into a loop at the bottom and used to stretch the entire implement vertically, squeezing a starch-rich liquid out through the weave and ends. This liquid is collected and the water allowed to evaporate, leaving behind a fine-grained tapioca powder similar in appearance to corn starch.

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