A Caribe woman washes the peeled cassava roots prior to shredding. At this stage cassava looks rather like a large peeled potato. Next the cassava will be shredded, squeezed, and washed to remove the milky sap and soluble poisonous compounds. After that the shredded cassava is dried, heated to dry the shreds and remove volatile toxic compounds, and ground into flour. Note the metal bowls in additon to a more traditional log container.
Sweet cassava, that is non-bitter varieties, do not need to have toxins extracted and then the cassava can be used directly like potatoes, making fried cassava, cassava chips, or boiled/steamed cassava. In some markets in the United States sweet cassava rhizomes can be purchased frozen, either peeled or shredded, and sometimes you can find bags of cassava (yuca) chips.