Citrusy Garlic Sauce Gives Yuca A Cuban-Style Flair

Infused with traditional ingredients like bright citrus, onion, olive oil, cumin, and garlic, there's certainly no lack of flavor in Cuban food. Some think this type of cuisine always equals bold levels of spiciness, but their meals reflect more of a focus on powerful flavors that lack extreme heat. You'll also find fresh garlic in almost every entree, so when selecting ingredients for our garlicky Cuban-style yuca dish, recipe developer Ksenia Prints made sure to allow this root vegetable to take center stage.  

Prints explained that yuca, also known as cassava, is typically served in Cuba with a sauce made from naranja agria, a type of bitter orange that shares notes of lemon, lime, and orange all in one. You might have a hard time finding this fruit at your local grocery store, so this version uses fresh lemon, lime, and orange juices to make the yuca sauce ingredients more accessible. 

However, after boiling the yuca for this recipe, you'll notice that it loses flavor and gives off a bland, starchy taste. This is where the sauce comes in and reintroduces all of those delicious, traditional Cuban flavors.

Just like our garlicky Cuban-style yuca recipe, you'll start by boiling the yuca. Next, simply cut it up into fries and fry the pieces in avocado or olive oil. Incorporate the traditional garlic and citrus flavors by creating a sauce from lemon, lime, and orange juice, garlic, olive oil, and cilantro. You can either dip the fries into the sauce or you can drizzle it over them and top them with more cilantro. Alternatively, you can try introducing other bold flavors into this recipe. 

Try soaking onions in vinegar to create pickled onions that you can spoon on top of the completed meal, which is a fantastic way to incorporate some tanginess. Start by soaking the onions before you begin cooking the rest of the recipe — this way, they will have ample time to absorb the vinegar. You can also pickle the onions and then add them directly into the sauce, as the recipe calls for, to marry the ingredients a bit more. 

Whichever way you choose, you'll have a vibrant dish full of incredible-tasting flavor.