adding corn starch to things.

[boomchakabowwow]

i made a dried scallop version of "water eggs" this morning for the wife. i had the thought, and every intention to add a bit of a corn starch slurry to the whipped and strained egg/water mixture. i think the starch will bind with the water in the eggs and prevent that egg-water separation you see with so many egg dishes. (i'm looking you - Diner scrambled eggs!)

i know my Step dad would add it to his shrimp and scrambled eggs dish. then i thought, heck my step dad adds corn starch to a bunch of dishes..and not just as a thickener.

i go thru a decent supply of corn starch at my home.

BUUUTTT..i forgot to add it to my eggs this morning. grrrr...and duhhhh.

any other non typical suprise uses for corn starch?

 

[More_Gyutos]

To stop your skin from sticking and getting irritated when you work at a restaurant and it’s fricking HOT. Been in the staff bathroom everywhere I have worked.

We used Wondra flour back in the day, but you can also use a little corn starch to help get your fish a little crispy when you pan sear.

 

[Dan-]

Yeah with talc being out of fashion for it’s cancerness, gold bond is now minty corn starch.

 

[rickbern]

I use potato starch more, but I cut extra firm tofu into thick French fry shapes, dredge them in starch and then wok em up with oil seasoned with salt and pepper.

Convinced myself this was virtuous.

 

[Genghis_F]

Chef Wang Gang massages it into cold rice the makes a crunchy rice basket by deep frying it in a wok for his pork in lychee sauce with crunchy rice
That dude is legit
Guo ba rho pien

 

[Justinv]

I use potato starch more, but I cut extra firm tofu into thick French fry shapes, dredge them in starch and then wok em up with oil seasoned with salt and pepper.

Convinced myself this was virtuous.

I think it would be good finished with spicy chili crisp.

 

[Michi]

A mix of corn starch and egg white (together with other ingredients, e.g. soy sauce and Shaoxing wine), is often used in Chinese cooking for velveting pork, beef, or chicken.

 

[blokey]

Starch water is the bases of Chinese cooking these days, makes the sauce more saucey.

 

[simona]

Chef Wang Gang massages it into cold rice the makes a crunchy rice basket by deep frying it in a wok for his pork in lychee sauce with crunchy rice
That dude is legit
Guo ba rho pien

Chef Wang is a cleaver rock-star!

 

[Michi]

Chef Wang is a cleaver rock-star!

^ @BillHanna

 

[chefwp]

Non culinary use: oobleck

Oobleck - The Cornstarch And Water Experiment - ScienceBob.com

Explore the cornstarch and water experiment for yourself and discover all the fun you can have with Non-Newtonian substances!

sciencebob.com

Kids are bored? Make them some oobleck!

Got friends over and they are all tripping on LSD? Give them some oobleck to play with!

 

[MarcelNL]

if you are bored, make them a pool full of it...and they can walk on water once it has become a rheopex fluid ;-)

 

[mengwong]

i had the thought, and every intention to add a bit of a corn starch slurry to the whipped and strained egg/water mixture.

Footnoting for any bio/chem geeks who missed it when it last came around — Kenji scienced this a couple years ago in the New York Times.

Kristen Miglore of Food52’s Genius Recipes pointed me toward a 2015 recipe, “Magic 15-Second Creamy Scrambled Eggs” from Mandy Lee’s food blog, Lady & Pups. On a Zoom call from Taiwan, Ms. Lee explained she’d arrived at the process by accident, while trying to get her sick puppy to eat something. She’d resorted to a mixture of eggs, water and cornstarch. As she cooked the mixture, she noted how creamy it stayed, even as the eggs set. From there, she experimented and found that a touch of cornstarch slurry added to her own scrambled eggs kept them creamy and tender, even when cooked rapidly over high heat. (These days, she recommends using potato or tapioca starch, which activate at a lower temperature and produce marginally creamier results than cornstarch.)

This Is How You Get the Best Scrambled Eggs (Published 2021)

J. Kenji López-Alt wants perfect weekday eggs without the fuss. For that, he employs this brilliant technique.

www.nytimes.com

i think the starch will bind with the water in the eggs and prevent that egg-water separation you see with so many egg dishes. (i'm looking you - Diner scrambled eggs!)

… he agrees:

The technique is truly brilliant, and the starchy slurry serves a dual purpose. Like fat, the starch can physically impede the linking of proteins. At the same time, starch granules swell when heated with moisture, binding that moisture and preventing it from escaping. You can leave these eggs on the stovetop for an extra 30 seconds, and they still won’t turn tough or dry the way scrambled eggs typically do.

As @blokey and others observed,

Starch water is the bases of Chinese cooking these days, makes the sauce more saucey.

Starch and eggs are not uncommon dish mates in China. The Malaysian-Australian chef Adam Liaw recommends thickening juicy tomatoes with a starchy slurry before incorporating lightly scrambled eggs in classic Chinese stir-fried eggs with tomato, giving the dish a comforting, silky texture. And, in testing egg drop soup, I’ve found that adding a cornstarch slurry to eggs before beating them and drizzling them into the hot broth will help keep the flowering curds more moist and tender as they set.

 

[Naftoor]

if you are bored, make them a pool full of it...and they can walk on water once it has become a rheopex fluid ;-)

Indeed! Fun for the whole family; they get to have fun staying on the surface as long as they can move fast enough, and the parents get to have fun making more kids

I’ve seen small amounts of cornstarch used to cut flour for some pastry doughs to reduce the gluten content.

 

[blokey]

Footnoting for any bio/chem geeks who missed it when it last came around — Kenji scienced this a couple years ago in the New York Times.

This Is How You Get the Best Scrambled Eggs (Published 2021)

J. Kenji López-Alt wants perfect weekday eggs without the fuss. For that, he employs this brilliant technique.

www.nytimes.com

… he agrees:


As @blokey and others observed,

It’s quite interesting to think about it, the most common types of starch used in Chinese cooking- potato, corn and sweet potato are all introduced quite late, while there are bean and lotus starch they are somewhat different. I read this one article about Mapo Tofu, which requires adding starch water three times in most modern recipe, actually did not involve any starch in the original recipe. It’s quite interesting when this technique became so common.

正宗的麻婆豆腐勾芡吗？ - 知乎

如题。说勾芡或者不勾芡的朋友都有，迷茫了。

www.zhihu.com

 

[mengwong]

I read this one article about Mapo Tofu,

good article but hold on just one second

然后是油，菜籽油的厚重口味才能有助于表现这道菜的最终味道，现在都是色拉油

Then there is the oil, the thick taste of canola oil can help express the final taste of this dish, now it is all salad oil

Canola oil makes this an authentic Sichuan dish??!?!

That poster needs to get his story straight, is he talking about what the dish used to be, or what the dish wants to be?

If he’s trying to say pre-canola rapeseed oil was used historically, fine, but I don’t know where he expects anyone to find high-erucic non-Canola rapeseed oil for the dish nowadays…

 

[blokey]

good article but hold on just one second




Canola oil makes this an authentic Sichuan dish??!?!

That poster needs to get his story straight, is he talking about what the dish used to be, or what the dish wants to be?

He means the raw stuff -Rapeseed oil, very strong flavor.

 

[Michi]

Canola oil makes this an authentic Sichuan dish??!?!

Yeah, just like cream makes for authentic carbonara.

 

[mengwong]

If he’s trying to say pre-canola rapeseed oil was used historically, fine, but I don’t know where he expects anyone to find high-erucic non-Canola rapeseed oil for the dish nowadays…

Ok, maybe it can be found in China

一桶菜籽油89元，你们觉得贵吗

一桶菜籽油89元，你觉得贵吗？家里人说我买贵了，他们之前在老家买现榨的菜籽油都才划10元左右一斤，我买的这桶油重9.3斤，算下来都划9.5一斤了，一点都不划算，而且还没有自榨的正宗。我说这不是之前没买过吗，先…

zhuanlan.zhihu.com

 

[blokey]

Ok, maybe it can be found in China

一桶菜籽油89元，你们觉得贵吗

一桶菜籽油89元，你觉得贵吗？家里人说我买贵了，他们之前在老家买现榨的菜籽油都才划10元左右一斤，我买的这桶油重9.3斤，算下来都划9.5一斤了，一点都不划算，而且还没有自榨的正宗。我说这不是之前没买过吗，先…

zhuanlan.zhihu.com

Sometimes you got risk something… Tho im fine with my flavorless oil.

 

[reisen]

For some dishes, mixing some lard (w/ flavorless canola oil) works well.

 

[mengwong]

Maybe I'll try with mustard seed oil … that stuff is available cheap here and super thick and strong.

But honestly I am the least authentic Chinese person you will ever meet. I know that I know nothing.

My wife makes fun of me because for most of my life I thought it was 马坡 豆腐. She set me straight.

 

[Rreidiii]

He means the raw stuff -Rapeseed oil, very strong flavor.

Rape seed oil is canola oil. Rapeseed kinda has a negative rap due to the name. Canadian Oil = rapeseed oil= canola oil, the name canola comes Canadian oil.

 

[reisen]

Rape seed oil is canola oil. Rapeseed kinda has a negative rap due to the name. Canadian Oil = rapeseed oil= canola oil, the name canola comes Canadian oil.

He refers to the rapeseed oil used in China, also called Caiziyou, which has a much darker color than Canadian canola oil, and a special flavor, while canola oil is flavorless.

 

[Rreidiii]

He refers to the rapeseed oil used in China, also called Caiziyou, which has a much darker color than Canadian canola oil, and a special flavor, while canola oil is flavorless.

Yes flavorless, they are all from the same plant, Brassica oleracea. Look up this genus and species, it will blow your mind of all its phenotype.

 

[reisen]

Yes flavorless, they are all from the same plant, Brassica oleracea. Look up this genus and species, it will blow your mind of all its phenotype.

It is true that they are from the same plant, but the difference in production process and erucic acid content makes a big difference in taste.

 

[blokey]

Rape seed oil is canola oil. Rapeseed kinda has a negative rap due to the name. Canadian Oil = rapeseed oil= canola oil, the name canola comes Canadian oil.

Yeah I know.

 

[stringer]

Corn starch works nice for putting a smooth crispy crust on fried veggie matter. The Indian guy I worked for used it for aloo kofta (Indian potato croquettes). It works nice on tofu. You can add corn starch to any type of fried breading or batter to promote a thicker heavier crust. Like fried chicken, tempura, etc. It's great for pie fillings and as ingredient in cobblers and toppings. If you are making citrus cream sauce or Alfredo for a huge number of people then corn starch will come out nicer and hold hot nicer than most other options (roux, mounting butter, straight cream reduction, etc). It does get a bad rap for banquet food, but if done well it can help a dauphinoise potato or something hold up in a chafer dish. It is nice for homemade condiments like chili sauce, sweet and sour, etc.

 

[Delat]

I use a 50/50 mixture of corn starch and flour for crisp oven-baked chicken. It’s lighter than straight flour. Straight corn starch works too, but the flour gives it a bit more body.

 

[Justinv]

Footnoting for any bio/chem geeks who missed it when it last came around — Kenji scienced this a couple years ago in the New York Times.
Kristen Miglore of Food52’s Genius Recipes pointed me toward a 2015 recipe, “Magic 15-Second Creamy Scrambled Eggs” from Mandy Lee’s food blog, Lady & Pups.

I gotta call foul here. I find very few reasons to use unsalted butter. Eggs are definitely not one of them.