http://www.food.com/recipe/chicken-garlic-soup-32282
They haven't mentioned which flour are they using.
Because I am health conscious, may I add whole wheat flour/Chickpea flour to garlic chicken soup?
What will be the side effects?
asked Dec 9, 2016 at 9:46
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1 Answer
This gets simple when you consider what the flour is used for:
You create a roux, which then thickens the soup. The starch in the flour is altered during the cooking process and then binds the liquid.
You can use any kind of flour that contains starch, but depending on the starch-to-other-components ratio, you might have to use a bit more for the same thickness. Unlike for baking (gluten!), chickpea flour will work fine in a roux. Also, a non-white flour might be visually less appealing because the external parts of the grain may give the soup a greyish or speckled appearance. Note that the less refined your flour is, the more it might influence the taste of the soup. But whether this matters obviously is a question of personal taste.
The choice is yours:
A few tablespoons of white flour in a pot of soup probably won't compromise your dietary regimen, but it's probably not worth going out to buy a whole bag for a single use.
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1Chickpea flour might appear to work in a roux, but I would bet on the mechanics behind it being different entirely.. it is far more protein heavy than any "flour flour", it behaves not entirely unlike eggs if mixed with water. Commented Dec 9, 2016 at 10:25
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1Indeed, I would expect some surprises when substituting flour. For example, I once tried making veloute with pure potato starch (I was cooking with friends and realized that I am in a gluten free household in the middle of cooking!) and it turned out quite strange. Edible, but everyone was put off by the texture before getting pursuaded to try.– rumtscho ♦Commented Dec 12, 2016 at 15:40