Can I Use Cornstarch Instead of Potato Starch
Cornstarch is often used in Chinese cooking––in fact, it's one of our suggested 10 essential ingredients for stocking your Chinese pantry. Though it'southward virtually flavorless, it easily i of the about vital ingredients in a Chinese kitchen, with multiple uses.
In this post, we'll uncover everything you need to go authentic results with Chinese recipes at domicile—all because of humble cornstarch!
How Cornstarch is Used in Chinese Cooking:
The primary uses for cornstarch in Chinese cooking are:
- Marinating meats to create a velvety texture after stir-frying
- Dredging foods prior to deep-frying to achieve a perfectly crispy result
- Magically thickening soups, gravies, and stir-fry sauces
- Rounding out chewy doughs, noodles, and baked goods
Are cornstarch and corn flour the aforementioned thing?
Nosotros get this question from our readers all of the time. Cornstarch and corn flour—as it's referred to in the Great britain and other British territories—are the same thing and tin can be used for the purpose of thickening sauce, gravies and soups.
That said, if you're in North or South America, and you ask for corn flour, you might just become finely basis cornmeal instead. Technically speaking, cornmeal is made past grinding the entire corn kernel, and cornstarch is made with only the inside of the corn kernel (the endosperm)—without the germ and the outer trounce.
Got that? If not, just expect at the pictures below and make sure you take the right stuff. Cornstarch is a super white, very fine powder.
Why should I thicken with cornstarch instead of AP flour?
If you have ever made a Thanksgiving dinner gravy—and I know many of you accept—you lot're probably wondering, "Why can't I just employ all-purpose flour, as I would do for any gravy?" Well, here are some reasons:
- All Purpose Flour, when cooked, makes a sauce cloudy and boring, while cornstarch appears shiny and translucent. This gives meat and vegetables the bonny sheen you've undoubtedly seen at your favorite Chinese restaurant.
- The texture of cooked cornstarch is more velvety than a flour-based roux.
- Cornstarch is essentially flavorless, which means the intended flavors of a dish are not afflicted. Roux, when cooked longer, can have on a more than caramelized/toasted flavour (anyone who'due south ever made gumbo knows this).
- Cornstarch cooks much more speedily and has more powerful thickening abilities—twice that of an equal amount of flour in a shorter time. If you're using flour every bit a thickener, and you don't cook it long enough, you lot will taste raw flour. If you look for the flour to cook properly, the meat and veggies in your stir fry will exist overdone and limp.
Why is cornstarch so common in Chinese cooking?
Cornstarch is a staple in Chinese cooking because of its availability and convenience. While cornstarch is used in Cathay, many Chinese cooks also cook with tapioca starch. In the West, cornstarch is more readily available and by and large preferred.
The reason why cornstarch is and then common is that it adds that perfectly silky texture to stir chips, soups, and sauces synonymous with cracking Chinese nutrient. The surreptitious? A cornstarch slurry.
What is a Cornstarch Slurry?
Quite just, a cornstarch slurry is cornstarch mixed with absurd water. In this form, cornstarch tin can be drizzled into soups and sauces for thickening without any powdery lumps forming.
How to Brand a Cornstarch Slurry:
To make a cornstarch slurry, we generally use a 1:one ratio of cornstarch to water.
But mix 1 tablespoon h2o and 1 tablespoon cornstarch until the mixture is homogenous (y'all tin can adjust the amounts co-ordinate to how much slurry a dish needs). The cornstarch disperses when it comes in contact with water (note that the cornstarch disperses rather than dissolves. This type of mixture, with one substance dispersed into some other, is known as a colloid. Science!).
The secret to authentic Chinese stir fries is that easy!
The one matter to recollect is that cornstarch tin settle and separate from the water quite hands (you can run into how it clings to the bowl in the photograph below), so information technology's important to re-stir your cornstarch slurry right before using. Just use a clean finger or chopsticks to loosen and recombine your slurry right before you add it to nutrient.
A Chinese Chef's Secret
So how exercise the professionals bargain with this problem of a cornstarch slurry separating and the continuous need to stir and re-stir? Merely when you're ready to add cornstarch to thicken and finish your dish, you find it has separated and requires a expert stirring—meanwhile, what if your broccoli is over-cooking in your hot wok!? Or your noodles are burning?! What a pain!
Speed in professional wok cooking is vital, then to sidestep this separating issue, professional wok chefs mix a small amount of very hot h2o into the cornstarch slurry to cook the cornstarch just enough then it doesn't split into a hard layer of starch and articulate water on top.
Partially cooking the starch suspends all of the starch molecules in the water and then they don't settle, nevertheless the cornstarch still retains the majority if its thickening power.
I have to admit, I was pretty amazed the get-go time my male parent, a professional person chef, showed me this technique.
Another important fact about using cornstarch is non to overcook your cornstarch or the starch will interruption downward and your sauce or soup will thin out once again. It has to be cooked just correct so when the sauce or soup thickens, that's the signal to turn off the heat.
Now that you lot've learned how the professionals use cornstarch, here's a rundown of all the means you tin can use cornstarch in Chinese cooking!
1. For Thickening Stir-fry Sauces
In this example of finishing our Beef and Mushroom Stir Fry below, you tin can see the thin stream of cornstarch slurry being drizzled into the sauce, while stirring information technology briskly with the wok spatula.
Using this technique ensures that you won't get cornstarch lumps in your sauce. Try to use 75% of the slurry beginning while stirring, and let the sauce melt for xv to 20 seconds. So check the thickness of the sauce.
Utilize more than if the sauce needs more thickening or if the sauce is the way you like it, save the residuum of the slurry for another time. The quantities of cornstarch and water we give in our recipes are really "best estimates" considering in that location are and so many variables during cooking so this is a skillful example of where yous want to melt by sight. Before long, you lot'll go the hang of how much slurry you need to add together according to your own preferences.
Beneath is the same technique used for Moo Goo Gai Pan. Every bit you tin encounter, cornstarch does not add any colour at all, and then it can be used for brown or white sauces—but it transforms what was previously a broth to a silky sauce.
Ideally, the sauce should be thick enough and so information technology just coats the meat and vegetables. However, the amount of sauce you create for your dish is e'er a personal preference. And call back, don't go along to cook the sauce subsequently it has thickened or the starch will break downwards and your sauce will thin again when cooled.
2. For Thickening Gravies
For gravies in dishes like Chicken Egg Foo Young, a larger amount of cornstarch slurry is needed.
It is veryimportant to constantly stir the gravy with a whisk, so no lumps form. It's also important to cook the gravy with the added cornstarch until it comes dorsum up to a simmer earlier checking the thickness, every bit the estrus "activates" the thickening agent.
And remember, hot gravy will thicken slightly every bit it cools, so exist careful not to add too much!
Shrimp with lobster sauce is another ane of those dishes that has a substantial amount of sauce in the dish. It'due south usually all-time to thicken sauces before adding any final ingredients, like egg or scallions, and then they don't overcook.
three. For Thickening Soups
Some Chinese soups, especially ones you're probably familiar with from takeout restaurants like Hot and Sour Soup and Egg Drib Soup, are translucent broths with a thick consistency and a suspension of meat, tofu, and/or vegetables.
Again, cornstarch is an ideal thickener, given its lack of color and silky texture. Information technology lets the smooth egg whites, silken tofu, and articulate broth in our Shepherd'due south Bag Tofu Soup shine.
When thickening soups with a cornstarch slurry, think to continue the soup swirling while slowly adding the cornstarch, which you tin can see in this photo of Chicken Corn Egg Drib Soup. Presentation is e'er key in Chinese cooking!
iv. For Dredging, Deep Frying, and Pan Frying
Chinese cooking uses cornstarch for frying to yield a low-cal even so crisp crust. It's a much better choice than all-purpose flour, which tin exist heavy and accept too long to crisp up, resulting in over-cooked or oil-logged fried foods.
Sometimes, dishes are fried and tossed with aromatics, like in Cantonese Salt and Pepper Pork Chops and Salt and Pepper Shrimp.
In other applications, the ingredients are fried and tossed in a sauce, similar in Orangish Craven and Cantonese-Way Ginger Scallion Lobster. It'due south important, especially in those saucy recipes, that the chaff be light, fragile, and really cling to the food.
No i wants their fried bits falling off in the wok!
Frying with cornstarch is piece of cake, considering all you need to do is lightly dredge the ingredients in cornstarch. No egg / flour / milk sequences required!
In the photo below, you lot can really encounter how cornstarch provides a sparse withal crispy crunch that clings to shrimp and won't bit off like a flour-dredged chaff. You can see how we exercise it in our full Feast-Style Walnut Shrimp recipe.
The same is truthful for frying tofu. Tofu tossed in a lite coating of cornstarch makes all the difference.
See the total details and steps in our recipe for Crispy Peel Stuffed Tofu.
Cornstarch works merely likewise for pan-frying foods besides! Our Chinese Shrimp Block recipe uses cornstarch as a binder and a crisping agent.
v. For Marinating Meats
You've probably seen that almost all of our stir-fry recipes utilise meat marinated in a mixture of cornstarch and oil, sauces, and seasonings.
This technique is known as velveting, because meats marinated with cornstarch have a velvety smooth texture on the outside and retain wet on the within.
All it takes is a teaspoon or ii of cornstarch per pound of meat. As an case for how to marinate beefiness, check out our post on How to Fix Beef for Stir-fry.
half-dozen. For Dough and Noodles
Cornstarch is an ingredient in some noodles, similar our cheung fun rice noodle recipe used in our dim sum Zhaliang (Fried Dough Rice Noodle Rolls).
It'due south also an ingredient in our Old-fashioned Chinese Almond Cookies, to yield a crisp and crunchy cookie.
Cornstarch Substitutes
If yous don't have cornstarch, there are some substitutes you can use with very like or even better properties, depending on what you're cooking. (But cornstarch is however the best multi-purpose ingredient in our opinion.)
Tapioca Starch
Tapioca starch is very like to cornstarch in terms of its use as a thickening agent, and is actually the preferred starch in China. Tapioca starch's thickening power is similar, and it has the same translucent colour and texture. Tapioca powder is even silkier in texture, and is a great substitute for meat marinades also.
Potato Starch
Potato starch can too be used as a thickener in a pinch, only cornstarch or tapioca starch are definitely preferred. Potato starch is ameliorate for dredging and deep frying, because it yields a crispy crust and texture. French fries fabricated with potato starch fry upward even amend than with flour or cornstarch, and our kimchi pancake (kimchijeon) fabricated with potato starch has an excellent chewy, crisp texture.
Prep: 2 minutes
Cook: one minute
- 1 part cornstarch
- 1 part water
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Mix 1 tablespoon cornstarch with 1 tablespoon water to thicken sauces in stir fries.
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Use 1/4 cup to ane/3 cup cornstarch with equal amount h2o for soups.
Source: https://thewoksoflife.com/how-to-use-cornstarch-chinese-cooking/
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