Hoy quiero compartir con ustedes una receta completamente deliciosa, saludable y bastante económica, es una versión de las tradicionales arepas venezolanas, las cuales usualmente son de harina de maíz. Aprendí esta receta durante la época de escases en mi país, cuando era extremadamente difícil encontrar ingredientes que para nosotros son muy básicos pero indispensables, como la harina de maíz, por ejemplo, entonces mi familia se vio en la necesidad de buscar alternativas para no prescindir de las preciadas arepas y fue cuando alguien nos comentó acerca de la yuca como posible ingrediente, de hecho era el único ingrediente que se usaba para esta receta, aunque hoy en día que es posible conseguir todos los ingredientes que queramos, en casa le añadimos algunas cosas más para aportar un valor extra a la preparación.

Today I want to share with you a completely delicious, healthy and quite economical recipe, it is a version of the traditional Venezuelan arepas, which are usually made of corn flour. I learned this recipe during the time of scarcity in my country, when it was extremely difficult to find ingredients that for us are very basic but indispensable, such as corn flour, for example, then my family found the need to look for alternatives to not do without the precious arepas and it was when someone told us about the cassava as a possible ingredient, in fact it was the only ingredient used for this recipe, although today it is possible to get all the ingredients we want, at home we add some more things to add extra value to the preparation.

You can use eggs and wheat flour or not, or you can use cassava as the only ingredient, in my case I use this extra couple of ingredients when I want to give it a more compact texture, but it is not compulsory, the result will be equally delicious.

Ingredientes/Ingredients

1 kilo y medio de yuca	1 kilo and a half of cassava
1 huevo	1 egg
2 cucharadas de harina de trigo	2 tablespoons wheat flour
Sal al gusto	Salt to taste

First of all you have to grate the cassava, usually the graters have four sides but in my case I chose the one with the smallest roughness so that the cassava is completely ground.

The result is a completely soft dough, very similar to the one you get when you mix corn flour with water to make traditional arepas, you don't need to add any more ingredients and with this you could make the arepas, however I decided to add an egg and two tablespoons of flour because it was a little difficult to compact the dough and these ingredients helped me to achieve a better texture.

Now take portions as small or as large as you like and form into balls, as you see in the pictures below.

In my country, Venezuela, we use a griddle called "Budare" which is mostly used to cook the arepas, this griddle has other names according to each country, in Mexico for example they call it "Comal" but you can use a frying pan, as long as it is previously hot. Now to form the arepas you must take the balls of dough and flatten them giving them a round shape, the more you flatten them the thinner the arepas will be, you can even give them shape by flattening the arepas when they are already in the frying pan or budare. It is important to clarify that the edges will not be as precise as when using cornflour, as the yucca tends to crack as it loses moisture.

When the edges start to look like this, i.e. a bit transparent, it is time to flip the arepas and cook the other side.

When they are golden brown on the other side, it's time to remove them from the frying pan. With the quantities I indicated in the list of ingredients I managed to make eight arepas.

The texture is delicious, they are very nutritious, healthy and delicious, in my case I filled them with cheese but you can fill them with whatever you like, they are great for breakfast or dinner.

This recipe will not take up too much of your time in the kitchen, it is very healthy as well as delicious, a different alternative that emerged in difficult times, but which is here to stay as another option, remember that the kitchen allows for a lot of creativity. Thank you very much for allowing me to share this recipe, I hope you liked it and have a wonderful weekend full of blessings.

(Image designed by me in canva editor)

Imagen diseñada por mi en el editor de Canva.

Todas las imágenes de este post son de mi propiedad, las tomé con un teléfono celular ZTE Blade A51.