Every good housewife has a grocery supply. Shelves in any kitchen are lined with jars and bags of cereals, sugar, flour, salt and butter. In addition, housewives always keep a supply of starch. This is a universal product that is used not only for culinary purposes, but also for various household needs.
How to make starch at home? This is a fairly simple process, although time consuming. The main thing is to find the right raw material.
Potato starch
Traditionally, potato starch is used in Russian cuisine. From the earliest times, jelly was made from it - sweet and sour and very useful for the stomach. But it can be used in almost any dish that needs to be thickened. Starch is added to air meringue, berry fillings in pies, to various sauces and other dishes.
In addition, it is used as the basis for homemade anti-wrinkle masks. From potato starch you can make yourself safe children's plasticine, tinted with juice of carrots, beets and spinach. And if the baby bites off a piece of such a “test”, then that's okay.
Potato starch is also used in folk medicine to treat rashes and itching.
Raw materials
How to make potato starch at home? This is nothing complicated. You can use any potato for raw materials - large, small, frozen and even good areas from rotten tubers.
A good choice would be medium-sized potato tubers for long-term storage. They are more starchy, and there will be more product yield.
How to cook
How to make starch at home? The procedure will be as follows:
- Wash the tubers. Young potatoes from the garden can not be peeled. Old tubers need to be peeled. In rotten ones, remove all bad areas.
- Grind potatoes in any convenient way. Best on a grater. Ideal for this are mechanical graters, meat grinders and food processors.
- Pour potato gruel with cold clean water in a ratio of 1: 1.
- Thoroughly mix the resulting substance. During this process, starch is washed out of the tubers and floats as a suspension in water.
- Then you need to strain the liquid through a sieve to remove the remaining potatoes.
- The liquid must be defended until it brightens, and all the sediment is not at the bottom. The white layer of sediment is starch. If it is dirty in color, then you need to drain the water from above so as not to disturb the powder at the bottom, and pour fresh clean water. Then let it settle again. Repeat the procedure until the starch is clean.
- Drain the last water. Remove the starch, squeeze it slightly and put on paper to dry.
- Dry for several days, periodically loosening and mixing the resulting product.
The resulting powder will have a slightly yellow color. This is normal. In industrial production, it turns out exactly the same, but it is slightly blued so that it is more attractive to customers.
How to make starch at home quickly? It can be done. If starch is needed for use in any dish, then it can be used in wet form. That is, as soon as the sediment settles, it can be immediately put into action.
If a dry product is needed, then its drying can be accelerated by forced heating in an oven. However, care must be taken that the temperature does not rise above 40 ° C, otherwise the starch will be spoiled.
Corn starch
The properties of corn starch are very different from potato. And if a recipe says that you need to add corn starch, then you can not replace it with potato, even to a lesser extent.
Corn starch is of three types - the highest, first and amylopectin variety. In addition, modified starch is used in various products. This is a natural product, specially processed so that it has any properties changed.
How to make starch from corn at home? Doing this is not as easy as using potatoes. But with due diligence it is possible.
How to make it
How to make corn starch at home? First of all, you need to take the right raw materials. To make good starch, you need either ripened fresh corn grains, or very hard, like popcorn.
Fresh grains are easier to work with. They are soft, easy to grind into gruel. The problem is that in most of our country such grains do not have time to ripen. They remain in the stage of milk maturity, and it is problematic to get starch from them.
Hard, dense corn grains are a more suitable raw material. But it’s harder to work with them. They must either be crushed, and then dunk. Or do the opposite, which is much easier. However, it should be remembered that corn swells very slowly.
How to make starch from corn at home? The procedure is exactly the same as when working with potatoes. However, it should be understood that when using a small amount of raw material, the yield of the final product will be small.
On an industrial scale, corn starch is obtained by soaking crushed grains in a weak solution of sulfuric acid, followed by a multi-stage purification of the precipitate. This cannot be done at home.
Liquid Starch
How to make liquid starch at home? It is very simple. It is only necessary to dilute the dry powder in water in the right proportions. To prepare it, you should take:
- corn starch - 0.5 cups;
- cold water - 2 glasses;
- lavender, bergamot or rose essential oil - 3-4 drops.
It is necessary to pour a small part of the water and mix the powder in it so that there are no lumps left. The remaining water must be brought to a boil and pour the diluted starch into it with a thin stream, without ceasing to stir. After the mixture is poured, you need to keep on fire for another minute, without stopping interfering. Then liquid starch can be removed, add aromatic essential oil and cool.
Such starch is used when ironing collars and cuffs on blouses and shirts, or soak in it individual parts of clothing after rinsing.
Reviews
Now many people know how to cook starch at home. According to reviews, potato starch is very simple to prepare. The process is not costly, as the majority of the population has its own raw materials. From each bucket of good starchy potatoes, 0.8-1.5 kg of powder can be obtained.
Corn starch is not so rosy. The product is very in demand, because at present in different sources you can find many baking recipes with its use. In addition, corn starch is used in various fun home experiments, like dry shampoo, as a cleaning agent, and much more. But getting it at home is problematic.