Gari substitute

Best substitute

Cassava flour (lafun or akpu flour)

Use the same amount by volume, but cooked rather than soaked as the gari you are replacing

Best for eba-style swallow

Taste and texture differ

For eba, cassava flour is the closest swap at 1:1 by volume, but you have to cook it: whisk it into boiling water and stir hard for three to five minutes, because unlike gari it is not pre-cooked. Fufu flour, instant pounded yam or semolina all make a perfectly good swallow at 1:1 using the same hot-water method. What none of them give you is gari's sour tang and slight grittiness, and for the cold soaked-gari snack there is no real substitute at all.

Other gari substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Fufu flour or instant pounded yam
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount by volume, same hot-water method
Ready-made swallow flours that are stirred into boiling water in exactly the same way as gari.
What changes
Best for
a swallow to eat with soup, quick weeknight meals
The most convenient swap, because the technique is identical: flour into boiling water, stir hard, work it against the pot. The result is smoother, stretchier and completely without gari's sourness or its faint grit, so it feels more like fufu than eba. If your goal is simply something substantial to scoop up soup with, this does the job with no fuss.
3Semolina
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount by volume
The everyday household substitute across Nigerian home cooking, made the same way as eba.
What changes
Best for
semolina swallow served with soup, when there is no cassava product in the house
Widely used and genuinely satisfying. Semolina is sweeter and softer with a mild wheat flavour, and it produces a smoother, slightly stickier swallow than the granular chew of eba. It is wheat, so unlike gari it is not gluten-free, which matters if you are cooking for someone avoiding gluten. Add it to boiling water gradually and stir constantly to avoid lumps.
4Plantain flour (amala-style)
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount by volume
Dried unripe plantain milled to flour, made into a swallow the same way.
What changes
Best for
swallow served with rich soups, lower-carbohydrate meals
Makes a dark, soft, faintly sweet and fruity swallow with less stretch than yam or cassava versions. The colour is grey-brown, which surprises people the first time, and the flavour is noticeably more distinctive than gari's, so it competes a little with a delicately seasoned soup. A common and well-liked choice rather than a compromise.
5Tapioca flour or tapioca pearls
Taste and texture differ
About ¾ the amount of gari
Also made from cassava, but the pure extracted starch rather than the whole root.
What changes
Best for
a stretchy swallow when nothing else is available
Same plant, very different product. Because it is pure starch with the fibre removed, it goes gluey, translucent and rubbery rather than granular and soft, and it has none of gari's sourness. Use less than the gari quantity because it thickens far more aggressively, and expect something sticky and elastic. Workable, but this is the option you reach for last.
6Farina or fine semolina cereal, for the cold soaked snack
Different taste
Use the same amount by volume
A granular cereal that swells in cold liquid, standing in for soaked gari with sugar, milk and peanuts.
What changes
Best for
the cold soaked-gari snack, quick breakfasts
It swells in liquid and gives a comparable granular spoonable texture, which is the mechanical part. What it completely lacks is the fermented sourness and the cassava flavour that make soaked gari distinctive, so it tastes like a plain sweet cereal. A squeeze of lime or a spoonful of plain yoghurt hints at the missing tang. Honestly, there is no good substitute for cold soaked gari.

What is Gari?

Gari is Gari, also spelled garri, is coarse toasted cassava granules made by grating, fermenting, pressing and roasting cassava, and it is eaten either stirred into hot water as the swallow called eba or soaked raw in cold water as a snack.

Cooking tips

To make eba, add the gari to the hot water rather than pouring water onto gari. Tip the granules into just-boiled water, leave them for about thirty seconds to swell, then fold and press with a wooden spoon until smooth. Doing it the other way round gives you lumps you will never work out.
Start with roughly one cup of gari to one cup of just-boiled water and add more water a splash at a time. Gari absorbs greedily and unevenly, and it is much easier to loosen a stiff eba than to rescue a sloppy one.
Yellow gari and white gari behave the same but taste different. Yellow gari is processed with palm oil, so it is richer and slightly savoury; white gari is plainer. Ijebu gari is the finer, notably sourer type favoured for soaking in cold water rather than for eba.
Store gari airtight and completely dry. It is roasted, so its appeal is partly its crispness, and it goes stale, soft and stale-smelling within weeks in a humid kitchen. It absorbs moisture from the air readily, which is also why it lumps if the container has been left open.
Do not confuse gari with cassava flour or tapioca starch when shopping, even though all three come from the same root. Gari is granular, fermented and roasted and needs no cooking; cassava flour is fine, unroasted and must be cooked; tapioca starch is pure starch and behaves like cornflour. Substituting one for another without adjusting the method is the usual cause of failure.

Frequently asked questions

Is gari the same as cassava flour?

No, and this distinction is the whole point. Both come from cassava, but gari is grated, fermented, pressed and then roasted, which leaves coarse granules that are already cooked, slightly sour and toasty, and that swell instantly in hot or cold water. Cassava flour is milled fine, is not roasted, is much less sour and must be cooked in boiling water for several minutes. You can use one for the other in a swallow, but not with the same method.

Can I use gari to make fufu?

Gari makes eba, which is a swallow in the same family as fufu but not the same thing. Eba is granular and slightly sour where fufu is smooth and stretchy. It serves exactly the same purpose at the table, scooping up soup, and it takes two minutes rather than twenty, which is why plenty of households eat eba on weeknights and fufu at weekends.

Can I substitute semolina for gari?

Yes, and it is a very common substitution in Nigerian homes. Use the same volume and the same method: semolina into boiling water, stirred hard until it comes together. It gives a smoother, softer and slightly sweeter swallow with a mild wheat flavour instead of gari's sour cassava tang. The one thing to note is that semolina contains gluten and gari does not.

Is gari gluten-free?

Yes. Gari is made entirely from cassava, which contains no gluten, so it is naturally gluten-free, as are cassava flour, plantain flour and tapioca. The substitutes to avoid if gluten matters are semolina and any wheat-based swallow flour, so check the ingredients on a bag labelled simply fufu flour, since some blends include wheat.

Can I eat gari raw?

Yes, and it is a normal snack across West Africa: soak a few spoonfuls in cold water with sugar, milk, groundnuts or coconut and eat it with a spoon. This is safe because gari has already been fermented, pressed and roasted during processing, which is what removes the naturally occurring toxic compounds in raw cassava. Never eat raw or unprocessed cassava root or unroasted cassava mash; the processing is not optional, and commercial gari has already had it done.

Related substitutes

More grains & starches substitutes

Gari substitute

Other gari substitutes

2Fufu flour or instant pounded yam

3Semolina

4Plantain flour (amala-style)

5Tapioca flour or tapioca pearls

6Farina or fine semolina cereal, for the cold soaked snack