The Best Thickeners for Baking

Byamazingfoodstv


Ingredient expert Jack Bishop talks about thickening agents.

ABOUT US: Located in Boston’s Seaport District in the historic Innovation and Design Building, America’s Test Kitchen features 15,000 square feet of kitchen space including multiple photography and video studios. It is the home of Cook’s Illustrated magazine and Cook’s Country magazine and is the workday destination for more than 60 test cooks, editors, and cookware specialists. Our mission is to test recipes over and over again until we understand how and why they work and until we arrive at the best version.

If you like us, follow us:

source

Similar Posts

44 Comments

  2. Jack, I love when you give us this in-depth advice about different ingredients. Here's one question for you: what about baobab powder? I'm in Germany right now and found this powder at a flea market. The lady selling it had made a jam from what she called forest berries. She said the baobab powder replaces gelatine in the recipe and provides a bit of a citrus taste. Any thoughts on its use or guidelines you can refer me to?

  23. Mom used to add pearl tapioca to some fruit pies to bulk out the amount of filling. The small tapioca, about 1/8th-inch or 2 to 3-mm size works really well in berry pies, it is close to the same size as the berry grains, and gets dies by the fruit juice.

  31. I’d like to know the differences and characters between : the Tapioca starch, Corn starch, Arrowroot, Potato and Sweet potato starch… apparently the starch levels are different, some are better than the other for certain cooking.. Thank you 🙏🏻😊

  32. A word-to-the-wise about the use of Pectin. Years ago, a former boyfriend, and I, decided to make plum jelly from a tree in his yard. Neither of us liked things that were VERY sweet, so we cut way back on the sugar. What we got was a nice batch of plum SYRUP. What we didn't know is that there is a chemical reaction between pectin and sugar, which serves as the thickening agent.
    When using a thickener that you have no familiarity with, read all directions. Better, yet … read up on the specific product online. That option wasn't available to us, then.

  35. Grittiness is caused by starch granules (composed of amylose/amylopectin and a small percentage of other things) that haven't completely ruptured (and flour has relatively large ones); Longer cooking and more stirring will cause these granules to rupture, leading to a slightly thinner, but smoother sauce. Cooking with acid will accelerate breakdown of the amylose/amylopectin, leading to a thinner sauce. Salt allows the sauce to stay a liquid down to lower temperatures, while sugar does the opposite. If browning your flour in fat, the more you brown, the less the thickening power of the flour will be due to the chemical conversion of longer amylose/amylopectin into smaller fragments. Sauces generally thicken upon cooling, so make them thinner–I believe you can follow weight percentages to get it right every time. This is all from "On food and cooking" by Harold McGee.

  39. Jack, this video is a bit disappointing. Yeah, we know about all these thickeners. You left out the most important bit of information–which would a cook choose any one of those thickeners over another? It would be so helpful to compare/contrast the different thickeners. Why do you prefer tapioca over cornstarch for a blueberry pie, for example? Why is apple pie classically thickened with flour, and how would it differ if you used another thickener instead? The video as presented is really no more than a shopping list; it doesn't impart any information or knowledge.

  44. I keep seeing arrowroot pop up in recipes, although they usually say you can substitute cornstarch or tapioca powder. Can we get a video on the application of these thickeners, please? Specifically which ones to use when?

Leave a Reply