I put way too much corn starch into a "random sauce": I was just mixing random things together to dip my carrots in. It includes whey, honey, and other random things. It was too thin and I used at least 1/2 a box of corn starch. It is still too thin, but that is far more easily edible then the corn starch problem. I was not aware that corn starch could add any taste to anything since it never has before. Now it tastes like chalk was added. How do you fix it to remove the "corn starch taste", and no "add tons and tons of the other ingredients" is not the answer - that would require having tons of money and I wouldn't need to ask on the Internet if that were possible. Just how to remove the corn starch taste.
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Relared: cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/9220/… describes how it's done properly.– Stephie ♦Nov 24, 2016 at 9:11
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2 Answers
Corn starch is a thickener, but not right out of the box. It needs to be heated to gelatinize, which also gets rid of the chalky taste.
If you tried to cook your random sauce now, you'd get a very thick mass that could easily be a prop in a bad sci-fi or horror movie, but not a dipping sauce. And the sheer amount of starch would "absorb and eliminate" most of the flavours you added.
Long boiling and vigourous stirring can break up the bindings again and so can freezing the cooked sauce, but with half a box of starch in what I assume to be a relatively small quantity of other ingredients, you are more likely to burn the "sauce" during cooking before you get to that stage.
As a little starch goes a long way in binding liquids (rule of thumb: 20g for two cups of sauce), you'd have to add a lot of liquid tomget that ratio, which you stated is neither practical nor economical - who's going to eat all that stuff?
But there is one property of starch that could save your sauce:
In cold liquids, uncooked starch sinks towards the bottom. So pour your mix into a container (preferably something rather narrow or conical), and wait an hour or so. The thinner your mix, the faster the starch will settle.
Then pour off the liquid, leaving the concentrated starch in the container. Do not discard it yet.
Gently heat your sauce in a pot, stirring carefully and watch it thicken as it nears boiling temperature. You will most likely have enough starch left in the mix to reach the desired thickness. If not, add a bit of the reserved starch slurry, a teaspoon or so. Remember that a hot sauce with starch will still be liquid, but thicken a lot when it cools down.
You didn't elaborate on you other ingredients, so be aware that not all ingredients or ingredient combinations take well to being heated - they might curdle or break down, for example. In this case, sorry, you will have to discard your experiment, write off the cost and start over. Perhaps with a tested recipe and work from there. We'll be here if you need help in tweaking it.
You might want to have a look at this Q/A, what went wrong there could help you.
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1MAYBE turning the whole thing into batter and making savoury pancakes could work.... Nov 24, 2016 at 9:00
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1@rackandboneman And then roll the carrots in it. With another sauce. Nice thought. But I guess that needs even more kitchen knowledge.– Stephie ♦Nov 24, 2016 at 9:03
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2Or just shred/dice/grate the carrots and in the batter they go... cornstarch is fine in large amounts in cake batters, so pancake batter (with lots of flour not just cornstarch) might be the best way to cook the cornstarch benevolently... Nov 24, 2016 at 9:06
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1@rackandboneman sounds like an answer that deserves upvotes for creativity.– Stephie ♦Nov 24, 2016 at 13:09
1/2 a box is a lot of cornstarch! Generally you'd add it by the teaspoon or tablespoon. You cannot fix this. If you leave it as it is it's an unpleasant tasting mess as cornstarch is not totally flavorless, and if you heat it you will get rid of the taste somewhat but the starch will thicken the sauce so much that it's practically solid. It doesn't sound like you had anything super-amazing to begin with so just throw it out and start over.
