Elubo is the Yoruba word for yam flour made by cutting yam into small bits, dried and then ground into smooth brown flour.
The flour is used in preparing amala or lafun making a mash meal and eaten much like the way mash potato is eaten in the Western World.
Plantain, cassava, and cocoyam elubo also exists, made basically by dessication of cuttings of these fruits, tubers or corms respectively and ground into fine flours.
Two varieties of these flours exists. One type is made by peeling the yam, plantain, cassava or cocoyam, sun dry the succulent pulp until it becomes almost crisp and then grind this in a milling machine to obtain the flour.
The other type is made from the skin or peelings of the yam or cassava or cocoyam but not plantain, which is sun dried into a crispy consistency and then grind into powdery form. This type powder is richer in dietary fiber content with less starch. This is the form highly sought after by diabetics in certain African communities, as it is believed to help in achieving better blood sugar control.
Plantain elubo is also popular amongst diabetics. It is recommended for diabetic patients because it does not contain refined sugar.
Elubo should not be confused with pounded yam. Pounded yam is obtained by cooking yam and then mashed in a yam blending machine or beaten into a dough in a mortar with piston.
It is processed by adding it to boiling water and then stirred under gentle heating. It then forms a smooth dough which is called amala.
Many prefers amala to eba or pounded yam because it is thought to be a "lighter" meal compared to the last two. It tend to feature at lunch time or dinner in most West African food timetable.
Amala is one of the staple foods of the Yoruba speaking people of West Africa and it is eaten with traditional African soups like egusi soup, ewedu, gbegiri or okro and stew. These soups and stews are vegetable and fish or meat based.
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