What is thickening?
Thickening is a technique in which starch and water are mixed and poured into the soup when the dishes are nearly ripe, making the dishes shiny, smooth and tender. Thickening is one of the necessary skills to add color and taste to dishes. If you want to learn to thicken, the first step is to understand starch. The raw material of thicken is mainly starch, because starch is insoluble in water, and when it is heated to 60 degrees with water, it will be gelatinized into a colloidal solution, so that soup and vegetables can be mixed into one. There are many kinds of starch used in thickening, mainly including potato starch, sweet potato starch, corn starch, wheat starch, mung bean starch, in addition to water chestnut starch, water chestnut starch, lotus root starch, pea starch and so on. But the most commonly used in the family are the following five:
1, potato starch
Potato starch, also known as potato starch, is the most sticky, delicate, crystal clear and shiny after thickening, so it is the most used starch in the family at present. Potato starch can also be used in the production of western-style bread or cake to increase the sense of wetness. Generally, I use potato starch to thicken dishes.
2. Corn starch
Corn starch is also one of the commonly used starches in the family. Corn starch is white and slightly yellowish, which contains a small amount of fat and protein. It has strong hygroscopicity and high viscosity, but the thickening effect is not as good as that of potato starch, resulting in white precipitate.
The soup thickened with potato starch will become thinner after cooling, while the soup thickened with corn starch will not change after cooling.
3. Cassava starch
It is refined from cassava, with white texture and transparent powder, which has a good effect on thickening or sizing.
4. Wheat starch
Wheat starch, also called chengfen, is white in color but poor in luster, and its quality is not as good as potato starch, so it is easy to precipitate after thickening. However, as the production of some pasta, it has a very important role, which can make the finished product crystal clear in color and strong in taste.
5. Pea starch
Sticky enough, low water absorption. The color is white and shiny. Besides thickening, it is also a good material for making vermicelli and bean jelly, but it is rarely used in families.
There are many kinds of thicken. The simplest one is to mix water and starch well and use it as thicken juice. If some seasonings such as rice wine, soy sauce and vinegar are added to thicken juice, it is called thicken juice. According to the consistency of the juice, there are two main types of thicken: thin thicken and thick thicken, which are also the two most commonly used ones.
Thin thickening: Thin thickening juice is relatively thin. After thickening, if it is a large or whole dish, part of the soup is hung on the dish, and part of it flows into the plate from the dish. If it is a finely divided dish, the soup will be as thin as rice soup, which is generally used for stewing and burning dishes.
Thick glutinous rice: thick glutinous rice refers to a kind of glutinous rice with a high concentration of starch and less water or other liquid condiments. The soup is very thick after this kind of juice is thickened, and it is all wrapped on the surface of raw materials. After it is put into the plate, the soup still does not separate and does not flow, and there is basically no juice in the plate after eating, which is generally used for dishes cooked by slip, slip and stew methods.
In addition to the thickness, there are two methods for thickening: pouring juice and pouring juice.
Pour juice: When the dish is close to maturity, pour the prepared sauce into the pot, while pouring it, gently push it with a spatula to make it even, or slowly shake the pot with one hand and evenly pour the sauce with the other hand until the soup and the dish are completely integrated.
Pouring juice: If the size of the dish is too large to stir in the pot, it can be served when the raw materials are almost ripe, and the prepared sauce is poured into the pot for heating. After the sauce is thick, it can be evenly poured on the dish.
Several key points of thickening:
The ratio of starch to water is appropriate.
Generally, the ratio is1:15. This ratio can be adjusted appropriately according to the choice of thick and thin, but the difference cannot be too much. If there is more starch but less water, the particles in the starch will be difficult to fully dissolve in the water, resulting in pimples. If there is less starch and more water, the juice of the dishes will increase, which will affect the maturity of the dishes.
Grasp the time of thickening.
Stir-fried dishes require crisp, tender, refreshing, smooth and soft taste. Generally, the sauce is poured when the dishes are ripe, and it is easy to burn the sauce when it is put in too early, and it is easy to heat the dishes for a long time when it is put in too late, thus losing the crisp and tender taste. It is best to thicken the cooked, stewed and grilled dishes when the dishes are fully ripe, otherwise it will affect the softness, smoothness and crispness.
After thickening, you can pour in seasoning oil.
After thickening, it is drenched with various seasoning oils, which have the function of enhancing fragrance, refreshing and coloring. These oils mainly include chicken oil, sesame oil, pepper oil, Chili oil, etc., and there are many common sesame oils for home use. However, the seasoning oil must be thickened before it can be poured in, and too much oil can not be added. Too much oil will hinder the packaging of the sauce to the ingredients, thus losing the meaning of thickening. In addition, after pouring in the seasoning oil, it should not be turned too fast to avoid the separation of oil and thickening.
4. thicken after determining the taste.
If you thicken the seasoning sauce first and heat it, it will become sticky, and the material will not enter the material itself, which will affect the taste of the dish. However, if salt, vinegar, soy sauce, etc. have been added in the blending process, the juice can be directly thickened and seasoned.
5. Control the temperature during thickening.
Generally speaking, after the sauce is put into the pot, it is necessary to quickly raise the temperature of the soup in the pot by fire, and always keep it in a boiling state, so as to make the color of the sauce brighter.
References:
1. How to improve the skills of thickening Web links
2. Link Baidu Encyclopedia webpage
3. The role of "skills" links to web pages
Extended content: The academic concept of thickening is that starch has the characteristics of water absorption, adhesion, smoothness and cleanness when gelatinized by heat. When the dishes are close to maturity, pour the prepared powder juice into the pot to make the marinade thick and increase the adhesion of the marinade to the raw materials, so as to increase the powder and concentration of the soup and improve the color and taste of the dishes.
Whether thickening is appropriate or not has a great influence on the quality of dishes, so thickening is one of the basic skills of cooking. Thickening is mostly used in cooking techniques such as stir-frying, sliding and frying. The similarity of these cooking methods is that the dishes cooked in this way basically do not contain soup. However, due to the addition of some seasonings and the raw materials' own water, the soup in the dish is increased. By thickening, the juice is thick and attached to the surface of the raw materials, thus achieving the luster, smoothness, tenderness and delicious flavor of the dish.
(1) Increase the viscosity and concentration of dish soup. When cooking dishes, add some soup or liquid seasoning (such as soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, cooking wine and other seasonings), and at the same time, some water overflows from the raw materials after heating, which becomes the soup of the dishes. These soups are too thin to adhere to the raw materials, which affects the "taste". After thickening, the viscosity and concentration of the soup are increased, which makes the soup blend and delicious.
(2) Keep the dishes crispy and tender. This effect is most obvious in the vegetable-skimming. For example, the vegetable-skimming is characterized by crispy outside and soft inside. If the sauce is not thickened, it will directly penetrate into the surface of the raw materials, which will soften the fried raw materials and destroy the effect of crispy outside and soft inside. After the sauce is thickened, the thickening juice wrapped on the surface of raw materials is not easy to penetrate because of the gelatinization of starch, and the flavor characteristics of dishes are maintained.
(3) make the soup and vegetables blend and the main ingredients stand out. For some dishes made by cooking methods such as stewing, stewing and grilling, there are many soups, and the umami taste of raw materials and the taste of various seasonings should be dissolved in the soup, which is particularly delicious. The raw materials and the soup can't be blended together. Only after thickening, due to the gelatinization of starch, the concentration of the soup is increased, so that the soup and the vegetables are blended together, which not only increases the taste of the vegetables, but also produces a soft, smooth and tender special flavor. After thickening, the soup became thicker, the buoyancy increased, and the main ingredients floated and stood out, which changed the phenomenon that you can't see the dishes when you see the soup.
(4) make the dishes beautiful in shape and bright in color. Because starch becomes sticky when heated, it produces a unique luster, which can reflect the color of dishes and condiments more vividly.
(5) It can keep the dishes warm. Because the sauce is sticky after heating, it wraps the appearance of raw materials, reduces the heat dissipation inside the dishes, and can keep the heat of the dishes for a long time.
Although thickening is an important means to improve the taste, color and shape of dishes, it is by no means that every dish must be thickened. The timing of thickening and whether it is necessary to thicken should be decided according to the characteristics and requirements of the dishes. Some special dishes should be thickened before the main ingredients are served. For example, "hot and sour soup" and "emerald shrimp soup". The egg liquid and shrimp are put into the pot after thickening, so as to shorten the heating time, highlight the main ingredients and increase the smoothness of the dishes.