Pounding (Food Preparation)

Pounding is a traditional food preparation technique, especially common in West and Central African cooking, in which boiled starchy staples such as yam or cassava are repeatedly struck in a mortar with a wooden pestle until they form a smooth, sticky dough. Between blows the mass is turned by hand, and water is added gradually as the pounding continues, so the food changes from firm boiled pieces into the soft, unified paste used to make staple dishes known as swallow foods, such as fufu and pounded yam. Where hand pounding is too labor intensive for large scale or everyday use, mechanical yam grinders, food processors or dedicated fufu machines are now often used to reach the same result.