Arrowroot - Everything You Need to Know

[by350]

I have been making an asian sauce that calls for arrowroot, but I can't find it anywhere.

* Where can you buy this stuff?

* How does it compare to Kazu root (what I've been using)?

[Toliver]

I have been making an asian sauce that calls for arrowroot, but I can't find it anywhere.

* Where can you buy this stuff?

* How does it compare to Kazu root (what I've been using)?

Not all grocery stores carry it. The better ones should.

Arrowroot: A fine powdered starch prepared from the root or tuber of the Maranta, a plant which grows in the West Indies and India. It is used as a thickening agent for sauces and syrups.

You can order it online if you can't find it in your area.

Here's one place where you can buy it.

Penzey's Spices has it, too.

edited to ask other posters: Could corn starch could be substituted? It's sounds like it would have the same thickening effect.

Edited March 3, 2004 by Toliver (log)

[torakris]

all you ever wanted to know:

http://www.foodsubs.com/ThickenStarch.html

[Arey]

My local grocery store has Arrowroot in its McCormick spice and herb display. The only time I ever used it was when making Julia Child's duck with orange sauce, when a translucent sauce was the goal.Tapioca flour also makes a nice clear sauce. Most oriental groceries carry it. It also freezes well, and unlike corn starch doesn't turn gloppy when reheated. There are several situations when corn starch is the only thing to use, but they have nothing to do with food.

[Arey]

all you ever wanted to know:

http://www.foodsubs.com/ThickenStarch.html

Thanks for the nice reference. The line about tapioca starch "The starch is also sometimes used to thicken soups, stews, and sauces, but the glossy finish looks a bit unnatural in these kinds of dishes." reminded me of the time when, after a busy morning of picking slugs off my hostas and dumping them in can with washing soda in it, I went to a nearby mall to go to a book store, and passing through the food court, the slick and shiny coating on the chicken and broccoli in the Happy Wokker stall made me want to tell the person behind the counter that they had a serious slug infestation.

[scott123]

I highly recommend Penzeys and not just for arrowroot.

[Susan in FL]

I don't have more to contribute about where to order or buy it, but will say... I love arrowroot. I use just a teeny bit for thickening sauces, so they aren't gummy-starchy, as kind of a secret ingredient. Sometimes I use it when cornstarch is called for. Great discovery.

[beccaboo]

Arrowroot's much cheaper if you get it in bulk from the health food store. I use it in place of cornstarch, because I think it tastes nicer, so I go through quite a lot of it.

[adt]

How easily can one tell sauces that have been given a little body with a subtle, judicious addition of arrowroot to ones based on a stock made gelatinous from bone/marrow, or even from more artificially added gelatin? I'm talking about texture here, and assuming the flavours are the same and that the sauce is sufficiently reduced that only a very small amont of arrowroot is used.

I had assumed that the undesirable, 'stringy' texture that arrowroot-thickened sauces acquired as they cool ruled it out as an option.

However, I had a sauce at a good restaurant the other day - think it was a Bordelaise - which, as it cooled, exhibited what seemed to me a very similar texture to the result of using a very small amount of arrowroot.

Can the use of arrowroot always be detected by a judicious gastronome? Is arrowroot a blasphemy in a good restaurant kitchen? How about other alternatives, agar agar, micri etc.?

[noholdsbarred]

i always put sheet gelatin in my consomme to give it more body but if you are making a reduction reducing should give the desired body, or good old fashioned monte au beurre.

[godito]

When I was first learning to cook in Santiago, during our first class on sauces, the teacher showed up with a box of cornstarch. The first thing he did was to throw it away. He told us we didn't really need it for sauces. All we needed was time. He was right. When you have a suce, you need to skim it often, reduce it until it reaches the right consistency, and, like noholdsbarred said, good old fashioned monte au beurre.

Many factors can have this same effect, but adding starch to your sauce alse makes it glossy (gelatin also does this). It gives it a decent shine. I still like the monte a beurre shine better, though. Just feels more authentic to me, I guess.

[adt]

I agree that generally, artificial thickening can be avoided. However, it seems to me that restricting yourself to reduction and monte au beurre is problematic for more some experimental cookery, where you may not want to have a stock base and may not want to include sufficient 'substantial' flavouring ingredients in the sauce. (you can reduce water as long as you like, it won't get any thicker, and whisking in just butter won't help much).

[Shalmanese]

Personally, I think cornflour and arrowroot have a place in the kitchen. Purely gelatin thickened sauces have a different mouthfeel to cornflour thickened ones. Whichever one you choose should be based on the end result.

edit: Also, AFAIK, you need a starch to thicken fruit sauces.

Edited June 22, 2005 by Shalmanese (log)

[dano1]

(you can reduce water as long as you like, it won't get any thicker, and whisking in just butter won't help much).

←

mmm, right......

[Corinna Dunne]

Personally, I think cornflour and arrowroot have a place in the kitchen. Purely gelatin thickened sauces have a different mouthfeel to cornflour thickened ones. Whichever one you choose should be based on the end result.

edit: Also, AFAIK, you need a starch to thicken fruit sauces.

←

I'm afraid I'm in the 'anything but cornflour' camp. This is a mouthfeel I can certainly do without. I'm interested in the subtlety you're talking about Ian. Whereas I can easily detect cornflour, I hadn't really given much thought to trace elements of arrowroot, or agar agar for that matter. It would be interesting to hear from some of the elBulli gourmands. I understand that Ferran Adria uses a diverse range of 'thickening' agents.

[Shalmanese]

A lot of asian dishes are traditionally thickened with cornflour and would feel wrong if thickened with anything else.

[Corinna Dunne]

I accept this point. I think the case of reduction sauces is a separate issue. As I see it, the question here is whether any sort of thickening agent in these sauces amounts to 'passing off'. I know that one of my biggest gripes with mid-priced restaurants is their inability to 'stick to the knitting' in their sector. By this I mean, they should leave the 'big' sauces alone, which of course would necessitate a change in price positioning if they were to be done properly.

[schneich]

what ever happened to the good old espangnole, or at least a decent demiglace.

when done properly you will get superior results from it !

throwing gelatin into the sauce like crazy or reducing it to a gluelike substance gives you sauce enough "body" to glue your tongue against your palate ;-)

whenever i have a nice little reduction, i whisk in a small cube of butter, and let the jus BE a jus ;-)

cheers

t.

Edited June 26, 2005 by schneich (log)

[begpie]

hi amigos,i need to know what arrowroot is called in spanish,can someone help me please?

[Joe Blowe]

Did you try Google?

http://www.google.com/search?q=arrowroot+in+spanish

Hint: It's within the first 10 hits...

[MoGa]

Did you try Google? 

http://www.google.com/search?q=arrowroot+in+spanish

Hint:  It's within the first 10 hits... 

←

I thought that was really confusing so I did my own searching in Spanish.

My mother is Spanish and would feed me arrowroot as a child when I was poorly (easily digested). She'd never came across it in Spain and didn't know the word in Spanish - it's more a British thing, a food brought over from Britain's former colonies. For all I know different parts of the Spanish speaking world have different names for it. It's native to South America, after all.

Best I could work out is that it's called arrurruz or maranta (short for its full name Maranta arundinacea).

There is a wiki page in Spanish showing some possible alternative names for this plant.

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maranta_arundinacea (first 6 words of article)

Eggplant and aubergine are the same thing, if begpie can say which Spanish speaking country s/he is thinking of it might help someone help further.