20
There are lots of potential thickeners, but you often need to select the one that works best with your given need (temperature, if it has dairy, resulting mouthfeel, etc).
In your case, you're already using rice, so you may want to stick with a starch -- corn starch, potato starch, tapioca, etc. For these, you add a bit to cold liquid, mix it well, add it ...
17
Another thickener that is readily available is gelatin. This has the added advantage that its free of carbohydrate (if you are avoiding that).
15
Consider the use of gums, which are essentially thickening agents.
Xanthan gum, a bacterial byproduct, can be used to thicken sauces. Here is an example of using xanthan + [pectin] (a plant sugar gelling agent) to thicken a vegan demi-glace.
A traditional demi-glace has gelatin from the breakdown of collagen (from animal bones), which is how it achieves a ...
14
As they cool, many proteins go from long, flexible and un-entangled to short, rigid, and entangled. For all of those, the basic thickening is due to protein structure. The proteins in question are
puddings - albumin (egg) (Note: egg is complicated, and can be made to entangle at many temperatures, e.g. souffles, meringues)
white sauces, gravy - gluten (...
13
Tapioca Starch
- Add at the very end of cooking, it works quickly and has a pretty neutral flavour. You don't it to spend much/any time over heat. If you can't find it in your typical grocery store, you should be able to find in a typical Asian grocery store/aisle. I use this often when I have Celiac friends over.
Arrrowroot powder
- More stable than other ...
12
Spanish hot chocolate and Italian cioccolata fiorentina both use cornstarch as a thickening agent. Both are used more for dipping or sipping (churros in the former case), however you could easily just use less cornstarch to make it more 'drinkable'.
Try a teaspoon of cornstarch, mixed with a little cold water, added to the milk when you boil it.
As Kate ...
12
You could try using arrowroot. This is a widely available alternative to cornstarch - it is used in cookery because it doesn't turn liquids cloudy like cornstarch does. In your case, it might work better as it also has a more neutral flavour.
Substitute 2 tbsps of arrowroot for 1 tbsp cornstarch, and make a slurry with cool water as you would cornstarch. ...
12
Filé powder (ground dried sassafras leaves) would be style-appropriate.
Fresh okra is only just now coming into season in the American south. I'm in Tennessee and most supermarkets carry fresh okra for most of the year (though it often looks quite sickly), and frozen year-round.
If it's something you enjoy, you might look into growing your own, as it ...
10
While sugar makes a liquid thicker, it is not considered a thickening agent.
Sugar is a crystal. When you add it to water, what you get is a simple solution. A solution of a solid in water is always thicker than water. This happens with all kinds of everyday substances. Whenever you add a thick liquid or a solid to a thin liquid, the result is a semi-thick ...
10
A very small amount of xanthan gum will work. It is commonly used in salad dressings. Be careful though, too much will result in an unpleasant texture that some describe as mucus-like. Maybe start with 1/4 tsp. Wisk in and increase from there as necessary, but in very small amounts. Xanthan takes a while to hydrate and thicken. Start with a small amount,...
9
You could use any number of methods, including:
Starch Thickeners (added as a slurry)
One of the simplest and most straight forward: dissolve some starch (cornstarch is common in the US; alternates include potato starch, arrowroot, or tapioca) in some water, into a smooth slurry.
Add the slurry to your simmering sauce base, stirring, and let it cook ...
9
Fresh tomatoes are insanely watery, so you're starting at a pretty big disadvantage here. Trying to fix it with a thickening agent alone might not be the best plan.
That said, if you want a short answer: use tomato paste, whether homemade or storebought. It'll thicken and improve the flavor. Watery tomato sauce usually has watery flavor, not just watery ...
9
The best way to decide whether to reduce a sauce or to add a thickening agent is to taste it. If the flavour is as strong as you want it to be, then reduce it no further and add something to thicken it.
If the flavour is too weak, keep reducing it.
Other points to consider/caveats:
reducing will increase salt concentration, so even if the flavour is too ...
8
There are a number of different ways in which gelling agents are classified. Off the top of my head:
Viscosity (firmness/thickness) of solution and gel forms
Thermoreversible/irreversible (does it "melt"?)
Hysteresis (water loss)
Hydration, melting, and setting points
Appearance (in particular transparency)
Sensitivity to heat, cold, alcohol, and pH
...
8
Corn starch only thickens when heated to 180 F, so it probably is not helping at all with your whipped cream.
I live in the US, so I cannot compare to whipped cream in the UK. Whipped cream for cake fillings is often beaten almost to the breaking point to make the foam as thick as possible. I assume you are whipping the cream sufficiently, and it still ...
8
If the restaurant or bar is using a margarita mix, they frequently contain additional syrups and stabilizing gums or starches which add body to the drinks. It could also be that the high powered blenders frequently used in bars will be better at creating a smoother and thicker texture, or a more 'emulsified' slush.
If you want to try making it thicker at ...
8
If you are looking for the basic and common ingredient to thicken the soup then I would suggest to go with Corn flour.
All you need to do is mix corn flour in cold water. Add it into soup and stir it well. And you are done.
7
I'm going to recommend trying something a little bit different - instead of "thickening", I think what you really want is "body", which is similar, but different sensation. To get the mouth-feel I think you are after, you should try a complex sugar, like maltodextrin.
Maltodextrin is a complex carbohydrate, made from starch and composed of many sugar ...
7
SAJ14SAJ has mentioned starch, but I wouldn't add any additional -- I'd just finish the pasta in the sauce.
Pull your pasta a minute or two early, let drain but do not rinse it, and add it to your sauce. The pasta will finish cooking in the sauce, absorbing some of the liquid. It will also release some of its starch into the liquid, helping to bind it.
...
7
Yes, this is possible but you need a high-speed blender like a Thermomix or Vitamix to do so. There's actually a recipe on the Thermomix website:
http://www.ukthermomix.com/recshow.php?rec_id=29
Ingredients
250 gm unsalted butter
250 gm milk (full cream or semi-skimmed)
Method
Weigh butter in pieces and milk into the Thermomix bowl. ...
7
The closest thing you are likely to find is a product called Wondra flour. Like idealmjöl, it is a pre-gelated wheat flour, but unlike idealmjöl it also includes some malted barley flour.
One post on this forum implies they may be interchangeable.
7
You can use cooked dry beans. I use baby Lima's, canned or freshly cooked. Do not rinse away the starch after you cook them. Cream them in a blender or food processor, place them in a skillet and add some of the drippings until it reaches the consistency you like then season, simmer and strain.
6
The usual way is to use a thickener. Some of them require warming, but others do not. Guar or xanthan gum will work if used in the cold sauce. It is the easiest way. If you don't have them, yuo can use gelatine, but you'll have to dissolve it in warm liquid first and then add to the cold sauce, then wait to thicken. None of these will change the taste.
If ...
6
There's a great overview of the differences here, including a taste-test experiment at the end.
Broadly: beurre manié started off as a "lazy" roux; some people claim that the cooking of the roux reduces any "floury" taste; the experiment did not find any discernible difference between the two options for either a bechamel sauce or a velouté.
6
Cook the flour with some butter or oil before adding to the soup. You are making what is called a roux which is a traditional French method for thickening sauces and soups
Measure roughly two parts of general purpose flour and one part of fat (or equal parts by weight), and cook until bubbling and the raw flour taste has gone, or it is lightly brown
...
6
Ok I'm going to give this a shot by helping you understand why the ingredients are in there. At it's core this seems to be a very aerated meringue with stabilizers to help avoid using dairy products and eggs.
organic sweet potato, organic apple puree concentrate, organic sweet
pea, organic white grape juice concentrate
These ingredients are your base ...
6
No, it won't work.
Michael's comment explains why. Whipping cream is not just fat and water mixed, it is fat and water emulsified. This is a big difference.
If you had some special reason to do this on a regular basis, you could get it to work by adding emulsifiers. You can beat any fat with water and lecithine or xanthan and get a creamy result. As far ...
6
Several options, depending on the type of curry and the ingredients already present.
Japanese Style Curries
Using a commercial, packaged Japanese-style roux:
Add another brick or two from the package. This type dissolves nicely generally with minimal clumping.
Using a homemade, Japanese style roux:
You can prepare additional roux by melting fat (butter, ...
6
The thickening in Bearnaise, as in mayonnaise, is not so much in the ingredients as in the technique. These sauces get their thickness by being emulsified.
An emulsion is formed by rapidly mixing, whisking or blending two ingredients that shouldn't mix (oil and liquid). The emulsifier (egg yolk and often mustard in the case of mayo) stabilizes the emulsion (...
6
You can visualise it like this: starch is the way that plants store energy, you can see it like long chains of glucose molecules. If you have these long chains, they lock in water at high temps (gelatinisation), and so they bind sauces. If you burn them, what you do is break those chains into glucose (or maltose), and that glucose you caramelise..that is ...
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