Ana’s Cuban Yuca con Mojo
- November 2020
- By Ana Osadzinski (Colet)
- Recipe from Cuba
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- (4)

Yuca con mojo is a favorite Cuban food snack or side dish—and at the table of one of our favorite abuela cooks,, Cuban-born Ana Osadzinski (Colet). She often makes this yuca (also called cassava) to accompany her famous Cuban picadillo, another favorite dish on repeat-request for her husband, the Polish chef, her kids and their families. This is a garlicky treat to eat on the beach in Cuba or on the coldest snow day near Chicago, where she lives. “I always bring this when I go to to my sister’s for Christmas, ” says Ana says, who learned to make this traditional dish from her mother, another great cocinera Cubana. Ana was born in Bayamo in the Oriente province of Cuba, and moved to the States when she was 14.
You can use the root vegetable fresh or frozen, she says. Personally, Ana buys her yuca in bulk, in the frozen section of the grocery store. The only problem is that sometimes some of the pieces don’t get fully soft after boiling 30 to 40 minutes. “But I usually am lucky and it all cooks,” she says. “I never ventured to make fresh yuca.”
For best results, Ana advises using “curly parsley, never the Italian kind. It tastes different. ” We’re sold: curly parsley only from now on. “I take the florets off the stems and chop finely,” she says.
It’s not likely Ana and her family ever have any yuca left over, but if they do: “I fry it in olive oil the next day, just a little, to bring it back to life.” She serves it, topped with garlicky mojo—maybe as a side dish to her Cuban picadillo—and all is good in the world.
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