What kind of starch is good

People often use starch when cooking, when making soup, when frying meat, and when making snacks. Many young people don’t know what kind of starch is good when buying seasonings. It depends on what dishes you are going to use it in. For example, corn starch can be used in fried foods, sweet potato starch is used for thickening, wheat flour is used for steamed pastries, etc.

1. Corn starch

Cornstarch, also known as millet flour, is the most widely used starch in cooking. Corn starch has a crispier texture after frying, so fried dishes that require a crispy crust usually require corn starch to be added to the batter. For example, sweet and sour crispy fish is made by coating it with a mixture of corn starch and pea starch.

2. Tapioca Starch

Before talking about tapioca starch, let’s first talk about cornstarch. Cornstarch actually refers specifically to starch used in cooking. Generally, most situations where starch is needed at home can be solved with a bag of cornstarch. Cornstarch is generally made from tapioca starch and corn starch alone or in combination, because these two starches are relatively cheap and very practical. Cassava starch is also called water chestnut starch.

3. Pea starch

Pea starch is a relatively good starch. It is better to use pea starch when frying crispy meat. First, it is moderately soft and hard and has a crispy texture, but it is not as crispy and hard as corn starch. Moreover, when using pea starch to make crispy meat soup or stew, the starch surface must not fall off. The jelly and cold noodles we eat in snack bars are mostly made of pea starch.

4. Sweet potato starch

Sweet potato starch is of lower quality, with a darker color and coarser particles. After gelatinization, it has a stickier texture and is generally not used for starching and thickening. But it has one advantage, that is, after gelatinization, it is sticky and smooth at the same time. The crispy meat made with sweet potato starch is black and the skin is not crispy enough, but it can be used in a casserole and will not become mushy even if cooked for a long time. The skin is tough and chewy and it tastes especially good. Just think of the dark brown, smooth and chewy wide noodles for hot pot.

5. Mung Bean Starch

Mung bean starch can almost be said to be the best quality edible starch, but because it contains more amylose and less amylopectin, and it is relatively expensive, it is rarely used in the kitchen (gelatinization mainly occurs through amylopectin). However, Longkou vermicelli made from mung bean starch is almost the best vermicelli (some also add some pea starch). It is so thin but not easy to be short, and has a chewy texture, which is difficult to achieve with other starches.

6. Potato starch

Potato flour made from potato starch is very smooth and is great for hot pot and casserole, but it is not as good as tapioca starch and corn starch for starching and thickening. It is also prone to aging reactions, which reduces the taste of dishes, so it is not used much in the cooking process.

7. Wheat starch

Wheat starch, also known as clarified flour, is used to make some Cantonese dim sum, such as crystal shrimp dumplings. It has good transparency and looks good when made.

8. Meat tenderizer

Meat tenderizer is made by adding some enzymes to starch to catalyze the decomposition of the protein structure in the meat, making it taste tenderer.