GARI PRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

Gari is the most popular West African staple food produced from cassava. It is consumed as processed or reconstituted with hot water to give a dough-like paste called "Eba", which is consumed with sauce. Gari is a versatile commodity because its organoleptic characteristics can be adjusted to conform to consumer specifications.

DISCUSION

Key steps in Gari Production.

Peeling: Freshly harvested cassava roots are peeled immediately after harvesting or at most, a day after harvesting.

Washing: Peeled roots are washed thoroughly in potable water to remove all sand particles and dirt, which could mar the quality of the final product.

Grating: Clean roots are grated to obtain a mash. Grating is carried out by means of a motorized cassava grater but hand graters, made by fastening the perforated grating sheets on wooden planks, are still used in some rural villages in some countries.

Fermentation: Grated cassava mash is loaded either into a polypropylene bag or basket (lined with polypropylene sack) and left for between 1 and 5 days to ferment, depending on the taste preferences of the targeted consumer. Fermentation of cassava is an important operation in terms of taste, aroma, safety, and general quality of Gari.

Dewatering: The fermented mash is dewatered inside a polypropylene sack by pressing with a manual screw or hydraulic press. Pressing is done principally to reduce the moisture content of the grated mash to 40-50%.The dewatering operation contributes to cassava detoxification through the elimination of cyanogen, cyanohydrins in particular, with the waste liquor.

Disintegration and Sieving: The cake formed after dewatering is disintegrated or granulated by a hand-held motorized cassava grater. The cake could also be broken up by hand and sieved with a manual woven sieve or rotary sieve, to remove the fiber and lumps (pieces of improperly grated cassava).

Cooling: Roasted gari is allowed to cool for 4-6 hours in clean containers. As the gari cools, it loses more moisture so becoming drier and crisper. Sieving (Grading): Depending on the preference of consumers, the roasted gari may be sieved to remove big lumps and obtain uniform particle sizes.

Packaging: The final product is packaged in unit packages of 1, 5, 10, 25, and 50 kg depending on the distribution outlet. The packaging material is either polyethylene bags for small unit packaging or polyethylene-lined polypropylene sacks for the larger sized packages.