Can sweet potato flour be used as starch?

Many people often eat sweet potatoes, and they all know that sweet potatoes have a wide range of uses. First of all, sweet potatoes can be used to make porridge, stew soup, dry them, and grind them into sweet potato flour. Sweet potato flour is very good for making vermicelli, because sweet potato flour has a certain viscosity and can achieve a similar effect to starch. However, starch is different from sweet potato flour. Although sweet potato flour can be used as starch, there will be slight differences in the effects.

Water starch

Cornstarch and starch are just different names, there is no essential difference.

1. Corn Starch

Corn starch is also called corn flour, corn starch, corn powder, and raw flour. In some places, it is called bean powder (this is indeed rare). It is starch extracted from corn kernels - the starch with the largest supply, but its performance is not as good as potato starch. In Hong Kong, what is called cornstarch is mainly corn starch.

2. Potato Starch

That is, raw potato starch and potato starch - the most common and most stable thickening starch used in households, called cornstarch in Taiwan. It is characterized by strong viscosity, fine texture, white color, and better gloss than mung bean starch, but poor water absorption. When added to water and exposed to heat, cornstarch will condense into a transparent viscous state. In Chinese cooking (especially Taiwanese cuisine), cornstarch is often mixed with cold water and added to cooked dishes to make the soup look thick and the food look shiny. Hong Kong cuisine sauce is usually made with cornstarch. However, the soup thickened with cornstarch will become thinner after cooling, while the soup thickened with cornstarch will not change after cooling.

Cornstarch cannot be directly mixed with hot water or added to hot food, as it will immediately solidify into lumps and cannot be cooked apart. After the food boiled with cornstarch is cooled, the juice will become thinner, which is called "returning to water". Therefore, cornstarch is generally used in Western pastry making to make the material viscous instead of cornstarch.

PS: Please note that it is different from potato flour (also called "potato flour"), which can be reduced to mashed potatoes by adding hot water and cooking. In addition, it is also often used in Western bread or cakes to increase the moistness of the product.

3. Sweet Potato Starch

Also called sweet potato starch and yam starch, it is characterized by strong water absorption ability, but poor viscosity, dullness, and dark red with black color. It is a powder made from sweet potato starch, etc. Generally, sweet potato powder is granular and comes in two types: coarse and fine. It is usually better to buy coarse sweet potato powder at home. Sweet potato starch, like cornstarch, becomes viscous when dissolved in water and heated. However, the viscosity of sweet potato starch is higher than that of cornstarch. Therefore, sweet potato starch is less used in thickening Chinese dishes because its viscosity is more controllable.

Sweet potato flour is mostly used in the making of Chinese desserts.