Potato Starch
The Joe Pastry All-Star Tour of Thickeners continues with potato starch. Boy. After a while all these white powders really start to look the same don’t they? And they’re awfully hard to photograph without overexposing them. Poor, poor blogger me. Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, potato starch. Potato starch is another pure starch like cornstarch and tapioca. In other words: pure thickening power in powdered form. Potato starch performs much like other thickening starches, and is good for a wide variety of applications, especially soups. It thickens at below-boiling temperatures and in fact should never actually be boiled, as it un-thickens quite rapidly at that point. Potato starch is especially useful during Passover for those who adhere to Jewish dietary rules, as it’s a non-grain thickener.
I’ve seen this used as a coating for chicken, when doing karaage, used in tempura batter in place of cornstarch, and used to make Scandinavian gluten free sponge cakes.
Thanks for this series it’s been wonderfully informative.
Hello Shilpa!
Indeed potato starch is great for all kinds of applications…just about anything that calls for cornstarch, tapioca or arrowroot. It’s great stuff!
And thanks! There’s more to come.
– Joe
In Chinese cooking it gives a more velvety sauce than corn starch.
Good to know, thank you, JMK!
– Joe
Used it in a stew this past week and it gave a very nice glossy thickness to the sauce without being gummy or pasty. Just mixed it with some cold wine until it was a slurry, and then poured it in right near the end of the simmer, and gave it the usual 5 minutes I’d give any cooked starch to lose any “raw” flavor. Don’t know whether it actually needed that or not–just habit. Thanks for the tip about not boiling it–I did not know that. Luckily, my stew happened to be at a low, low simmer, so I got perfect results. Would definitely use again.
Nice to hear that, Sialia!
Potato starch doesn’t need the cooking time like wheat flour does…it doesn’t have the same “starchy” taste since the granules are smaller. But glad it worked so well!
Cheers,
– Joe