Pure Pounded Yam Flour (Iyan) – 2 lb Bag

Is the 2 lb bag the right place to start with pounded yam flour?

If you have never made iyan from flour, or you cook it now and then rather than every week, this is the pack to open first. The bag holds 900 g, which is roughly 7 cups of flour and about 7 servings at the planning figure of 1 cup (around 125 g) per person. That covers about three dinners for two people, or one family meal for four with a few portions to spare.

Inside is yam and nothing else. The flour is milled from Benue yams grown in Benue State, Nigeria, which are peeled, parboiled, dried, ground fine and sifted, with no preservatives added. The bag is labeled as West African yam flour for pounded yam and carries the 1pFoods name. Brand names belong to their owners.

What iyan is, and why a flour version exists

Iyan is the Yoruba name for pounded yam. The traditional version starts with white Guinea yam, Dioscorea rotundata, which the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture calls the most important yam species in West and Central Africa. It is the firm, white-fleshed type that West African cooks favor for pounding. The tubers are peeled, boiled until soft, then worked in a wooden mortar with a heavy pestle, with a little water added now and then, until the mass is smooth, elastic and easy to shape. It is a swallow: you pinch off a piece, dip it in soup and eat it by hand.

Pounding is heavy work, and Nigerian food scientists have studied instant yam flour as a way around it: wash, peel, slice, parboil, dry and mill. Because the yam is parboiled before it is dried, the flour forms a dough as soon as it meets hot water and a spatula, so your arm does the job of the pestle. The result is similar to the real thing in stretch and smoothness, and it takes minutes.

Your first pot: a one-cup test run, step by step

Cook a single portion before you cook for the table: 1 cup of flour (about 125 g) and 1.25 cups of water. The directions printed on the pack always come first, because brands absorb water differently, so treat these numbers as a starting point.

1. Bring the water to a full boil in a small, sturdy pot, then turn the heat down to low.
2. Add the flour a little at a time while stirring with a wooden spatula. Tipping it in all at once is how lumps start.
3. When the flour is wet, switch from stirring to folding: press the dough against the side of the pot, lift it from the bottom and fold it over. Keep going for about 2 minutes, a little longer if it still looks grainy.
4. Check the dough. It should look smooth and come away from the sides of the pot as one mass.
5. Shape it into a ball with the spatula and serve hot, with the soup waiting.

Recipe writers disagree a little on water. Some use close to equal volumes of flour and water, others nearer two parts water to one part flour, and a few start by whisking a spoonful of flour into cold water. They agree on the principle: begin with less water, add hot water in small splashes, and stop when the dough is stretchy but holds its shape. The 1.25 cup starting point sits at the drier end of that range, and a drier pot is easy to loosen.

Lumps, stiff dough and soft dough: fixing a first attempt

• Lumps. Dab a little boiling water on the lump and squash it against the pot wall with the flat of the spatula until it disappears.
• Too stiff. Add hot water a spoonful at a time and fold it in.
• Too soft or sticky. Fold in a spoonful of flour over low heat and keep folding until it firms up.
• Catching on the bottom. The heat is too high. Lower it and keep the dough moving.

Which soup to cook with your first bag

On its own iyan is gentle in flavor, so it is meant to carry a well-seasoned soup. Cooks most often pair it with egusi, made from ground melon seeds; efo riro, the Yoruba soup of stirred leafy greens, peppers and palm oil; okra soup; and ogbono, a draw soup thickened with ground bush mango seed. Ogbono is on our list but not for sale yet, and the Notify me form on its ogbono page is how you hear when it arrives. In southern Nigeria, pounded yam is also one of the usual partners for edikang ikong, built on fluted pumpkin leaves (ugu) and waterleaf, and for afang, made with okazi leaves.

For a first meal, choose a soup you already know how to make. A new swallow is enough to learn in one evening.

How a 2 lb bag fits a small household

One person cooking pounded yam once a week gets about seven weeks from the bag, and a couple having it on Sundays gets three to four. Big appetites mean a larger portion than 1 cup, so adjust to your table. If you would rather not remember to reorder, the subscribe and save option on the product page sends you a reminder every 4 weeks, and nothing is charged automatically.

Keeping the bag fresh between dinners, and what to do with leftovers

Press the air out and reseal the bag after each use, keep it cool and dry away from the stove's steam, scoop with a dry cup and check the best-before date.

Cooked iyan is another matter. It is a moist, cooked starch, so the usual advice for cooked starchy foods such as rice applies. Get leftovers into the refrigerator within 2 hours of cooking, or within 1 hour if the room is hotter than 90 degrees F. Eat them within 3 to 4 days and reheat until steaming hot, with a splash of water and a stir.

Delivery notes, and moving up to a bigger pack

Orders go out within 24 to 48 hours and typically take 2 to 5 business days to reach any address in the lower 48 states or DC. Shipping is a flat rate until an order reaches the equivalent of five 2 lb bags, so one bag alone does not ship free. If the first bag disappears fast, the 5 x 2 lb bundle and the 10 lb bag each reach the free shipping line by themselves, and the whole pounded yam flour range is on one page. No sales tax is charged. Questions: hello@afrifoodsbasket.com or WhatsApp (734) 219-0258.