What potato varieties are better to choose for cooking starch, Ogorodnik asked the deputy director of the Institute of Potato Growing at a round table of the Ukrainian Association of Potato Producers Nikolai Furdyga. And, as it turned out, finding them is not so easy. Indeed, now, according to Nikolai Furdyga, special varieties of potatoes with a high starch content are practically no longer on sale.

Choosing varieties

“Sorts with a high starch content are Chervona Ruta (starch content 25-26%) and Sluch (25%),” Nikolai Furdyga noted.

Potatoes, which are ideal for starch production, should contain 20-24% dry matter and 0.2-0.4% sugars. In such potatoes, there should be no darkening of the pulp, and the amount of waste should not exceed 15%. Tubers must be whole, dry and free from diseases.

It should be understood that the starch content also depends on the potato growing technology.

If you used more nitrogen when growing potatoes, then the starchiness there will be lower.

Also, the quality of products is affected by the time the potatoes are in the ground. If you want to get starch, then you should start producing it at home no later than 2 weeks after digging the potatoes - this is ideal.

By the way

For two years, an experiment was carried out on the basis of the Vimal starch plant, during which they found out which varieties of potatoes contain the most starch. He identified the top three: Kuras (23%), Eurostarch (20%) and Caruso (19%). These varieties are available in the assortment of "Professional Nasinnya" in small packaging and are sold through online stores.

Most varieties now contain 14-20%. Average indicators - from 1 bucket (12-15 kg) of potatoes, 1-1.5 kg of homemade starch is obtained.

Stages

1. For cooking starch at home, I need potatoes and water.

2. Wash tubers well and peel, cut off damaged areas. Then rinse them thoroughly in clean water again.

3. Chop the potatoes on a fine grater or pass through a meat grinder. Periodically add water to a container with mashed potatoes (or grated) so that the mixture is always liquid. The potato will release starch into the water.

Our advice

If you do not have a grater with fine holes, then the potatoes can be chopped in a juicer, then add cold water to the resulting mass in a 1: 1 ratio.

4. Pour mashed potatoes with water, stir. At this point, the starch gets out of the potatoes into the water. If you have a slightly red solution at the beginning, do not be alarmed, there is a lot of iron in the tubers, so the solution is oxidized.

5. Then strain the mass into an enamel bowl through cheesecloth folded in two. Squeeze the pulp (hard part) well, it will no longer be useful to you.

6. Then the liquid should be allowed to stand until the water becomes clear and the starch settles to the bottom.

7. Then carefully drain the water. After that, add clean water again and let the starch settle again. So repeat 2-4 times until you get the purest starch.

8. Having drained the water the last time, proceed to drying it. Squeeze raw starch out of the water and sprinkle on paper, foil or thin plywood.

9. It should be dried in a warm place or in the oven at a temperature not exceeding 40 degrees. If the temperature is higher, the starch will turn into a paste.

10. The dryness of the starch is checked by touch.

11. When the starch is dry, roll it out with a rolling pin or pass it through a coffee grinder, then it will turn out to be crumbly.

The resulting starch will have a slightly yellowish tint - this is normal.

The factory-obtained starch is also yellow, white color is given by means of "blueing".

Store starch in a sealed container in a dry, warm place. Its shelf life is unlimited.

Ivanna KUROVETS
Photo depositphotos

The process of obtaining potato starch at home is not difficult. For these purposes, it is absolutely not necessary to use any special varieties of potatoes, even damaged and frozen potato tubers will do. In order to get 1-1.5 kilograms of homemade starch, you must use one large bucket of potatoes of any kind and in any condition.

So, what are the sequential steps of the process of preparing potato starch?

1. Prepared root vegetables are thoroughly washed with cold water until the dirt is completely removed from the peel, and the use of a special hard brush will greatly facilitate this process. It is necessary to carefully examine the potato tubers and cut out the rotten and frost-bitten places.

2. In the absence of free time, potatoes may not be peeled, but chopped as a whole, but still the best option would be to completely remove the skin from the tubers and wash them again in clean water.

3. Prepared potatoes should be carefully chopped on a grater with small holes, not forgetting to periodically pour cold water over the grater. The grated potato pulp will accumulate in a container of water. In the absence of such a grinding device in the house, you can use a conventional juicer by adding the same amount of cold water to the resulting puree.

4. With thorough mixing of the resulting mass, the starch will get into the water, after which the potatoes should be squeezed out using an ordinary gauze cloth.

5. At the bottom of the enamel pot, put gauze or a thin cloth folded in several layers, onto which the potato mass is poured. After that, a certain time is kept, during which the starch will completely settle to the bottom of the pan. The water formed on top is drained, and fresh starch is poured with clean cold water and again kept for the right time for it to fall to the bottom. This procedure is repeated several times until an absolutely pure and snow-white starch is formed.

6. After the last draining of the water, dry the starch to a white powder. To do this, it is necessary to carefully squeeze the starch from the water and carefully sprinkle it on a prepared paper or baking sheet, which is placed in an oven or stove with an air temperature of 35-40 degrees. You can also dry starch in an ordinary warm place, constantly checking its dryness by touch.

7. A well-dried product should be gently rubbed with palms or rolled out with a rolling pin, which will give it a crumbly appearance. It is recommended to store ready-made starch in a tight-fitting container, which will protect it from moisture.

Homemade starch has a yellowish tint, which is its distinguishing feature from the factory product. However, this absolutely does not change its qualitative composition and usefulness, since it is prepared without any chemical additives.

How to make potato starch at home

After completing all these steps, I got starch, about a glass by volume. It was possible to peel the potatoes before chopping, then the starch would not have to be washed.
Preparation of milk jelly.

2. Pour some water on the bottom to prevent the milk from burning.

3. Add the required amount of milk, salt on the tip of a knife, sugar to taste into the pan.

4. Heat on
5. Simultaneously with heating the milk, take a glass, pour water into it and dissolve the starch in it.
6. Before boiling milk, reduce heat, pour the starch solution into milk in a thin stream, stirring continuously.
7. When the jelly thickens, remove it from the stove and pour it into plates.
8. Let it cool down a little and invite those who wish to eat.
All this was done by me and I really got a delicious jelly, which not only my dad but also my sisters and myself ate with pleasure.
In the course of my research work, we posed a problem - to find out how you can independently obtain starch - a valuable nutritious product. It turned out that this does not require any complex devices, large expenditures of energy and funds. It is enough to follow a series of simple steps and you get a useful substance in a simple and very cheap way.
In addition, this work shows a real way to use waste material - small potatoes, which are often simply left at the place of digging potatoes. Plus, for the preparation of starch, frozen potatoes, which seem to be completely useless, are also suitable. Or maybe someone will find the recipe for preparing a tasty and healthy dish - milk jelly useful.

Potato starch is one of the most popular products. It has properties that allow it to be used in cooking, cosmetology, medicine. To be sure of the quality of the product, we will learn how to cook potato starch at home.

How to cook potato starch

If you want to make a starchy powder with your own hands, it is important to choose suitable fruits, follow the recipe and carry out all the actions that are usually performed in production.

How to choose potatoes

At home, potato starch is made from fruits that contain a large amount of this substance - from 20-25% and above. This indicator is influenced by the variety of the root crop. The most starchy varieties are Lorkh, Voltman and others. A large amount of the final product is obtained from them.

To choose the right potatoes with a high starch content, the root crop is cut in half and simple experiments are carried out:

• Rub the palm of the hand with a cut of the tuber. If there is a lot of starch, the dusting effect is felt on the skin;
• The cut potatoes are left to air for 20-30 minutes. When moisture evaporates, a starchy film forms on the cut surface. The faster it appears, the more useful substance in the tuber.

Potato connoisseurs note: a high content of starch in potato tubers with brown skin. Such a root crop quickly crumbles during cooking. It makes an excellent puree.

You cannot get starch from spoiled, frozen potatoes. The beneficial substances in it pass into sugars, which dissolve in water. Small roots are not suitable for this. This potato contains a lot of fiber, and the starch content is 8-10%.

Potato starch contains several components important for digestion. Among them are carbohydrates, proteins, saccharides, etc. A loose white, tasteless powder contains useful minerals: calcium, potassium, phosphorus.

How to make starch at home

The recipe for how to cook potato starch at home is simple, but the process is time consuming and lengthy.

To work, you will need dishes and kitchen tools:

• 2 deep bowls;
• a tray covered with parchment or a clean cloth;
• sharp knife;
• grater with fine cells;
• sieve.

Before you make your own starch, you should find out the percentage of the finished product yield. Usually, no more than 80-85 g of white powder is obtained from 2 kg of root crops. For home cooking, 100 g of starch, 2.5-2.8 kg of potatoes are processed.

Preparation time for raw materials - 30-40 minutes, drying - up to 3 days. To make the process go faster, create the optimal temperature and humidity in the room.

Preparation of raw materials

1. The fruits of the potatoes are washed thoroughly, the water is allowed to drain.
2. Peel off, remove any damage.
3. Clean tubers are grated or chopped in a meat grinder.
4. The resulting mixture is filtered through a sieve.
5. The liquid is left in a dish for 20-30 minutes so that the sediment settles to the bottom.
6. Next, carefully drain the liquid and fill the container with the settled mass with cold water. They are waiting for a new precipitate to form. The steps are repeated as many times as necessary to obtain a pure, white substance at the bottom of the vessel.

How to make starch at home from prepared raw materials ? To do this, use the drying method. Spread the mass in an even layer on a tray covered with parchment or a clean cloth. The thinner it is, the faster the moisture will evaporate and a white powder will form.

Drying of starch is carried out at room temperature in a room with low humidity. These conditions will significantly accelerate the process of evaporation of moisture from potato raw materials. After 8-9 hours, the product is kneaded if lumps have formed. It is mixed and leveled. Similar manipulations are carried out several times until the moisture has completely evaporated. This takes 3 days.

A simple recipe for making potato starch at home allows you to get a high quality natural product. It is a snow-white crumbly powder, tasteless and odorless. In finished form, it is stored in a container tightly closed with a lid.

Useful properties of potato starch

Potatoes high in starch – a source of obtaining a product that is widely used in cooking, medicine, cosmetology.

Nutritionists advise using white food powder for food in the form of jelly , brewed on the basis of fruit, berry juices. This dish improves the digestion process. It is absorbed quickly. Due to its component composition, jelly on potato starch helps to remove excess moisture from the body, toxins and harmful substances.

Cosmetologists recommend making masks for the skin of the face from starch. They eliminate oily sheen, save from acne, acne. Such agents are shown for fatty epithelium. As a result of the use of starchy components, the skin becomes even, looks beautiful and healthy.

With the help of starch, many diseases are treated, especially of a dermatological nature. It perfectly heals wounds, cuts, relieves pain and promotes rapid healing of skin lesions in case of burns. It is used to treat skin conditions such as eczema. The white powder acts as a disinfectant against external influences.

Knowledge of how to make potato starch at home, how to use it, allows you to expand the range of its application. A self-made product will not raise doubts about its naturalness and high degree of benefits.

Starch is used as an additive to various dishes. It can be potato and corn. His choice depends on the preferences of the person. If you have a desire, you can easily try to make potato starch and corn starch yourself at home. It will not take much time, on average 30 minutes. How to make starch from potatoes and corn will be described below.

Ingredients and tools for a homemade product

To prepare potato starch, we need:

• potatoes (you can take small or slightly frozen - this will not affect the taste in any way)
• a bowl
• grater, juicer, blender, meat grinder or vegetable cutter (what is at hand at home)
• cold drinking water
• gauze or fine sieve

If you prefer corn starch, then for its own production you will need the same list of necessary devices, but the main component will no longer be potatoes, but corn.

How to cook potato starch?

Many housewives love to cook food from natural products, and starch is no exception. How to make potato starch yourself at home? As a rule, making a starchy product from potatoes is not very difficult. The main thing is desire, time and availability of everything you need.

The cooking sequence is simple and looks like this:

• Potato tubers must be thoroughly cleaned of dirt by thoroughly washing them under running water. Both small potatoes and damaged ones are suitable here. If there are spoiled areas on vegetables or rot, then these areas should be cut off. You don't need to peel potatoes

• The next step is to chop the potatoes. Any of the above devices is suitable for this. How you do it will not matter. In general, the result should be a kind of puree.
• Pour cold water into the resulting potato mass, in a 1: 1 ratio. Then mix thoroughly. With stirring, the starch from the potatoes enters the water. As a result, the potatoes are washed. It is for this purpose that the whole mass must be very well stirred.
• The next step is to filter the potatoes. To do this, immediately after mixing, without allowing the mass to thicken, strain it through a prepared piece of gauze or a fine sieve. A good container for such a case is an enamel saucepan. But the potato mass is no longer needed and can be thrown away
• The filtered liquid must be left for a while so that it settles. After a short period of time, you will notice that the starch made is at the bottom, and the liquid at the top has become transparent in color. In order not to loosen the settled starchy potato product, this clear water should be carefully drained. After that, the potatoes can be rinsed with water again, removing the starch residues from them. It is recommended to repeat this procedure 2 times.

• The final step in making homemade potato starch is drying it. To do this, put the mass that has settled to the bottom on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper and send it to the oven until it dries completely. The temperature regime in the oven should not exceed 40 ° C. If starch is not for you in a hurry, you can leave the starch mass to dry out on a baking sheet in the fresh air and gradually it will dry out on its own
• When the starch made becomes crumbly, roll it with a rolling pin, or knead it in your palms. This is necessary in order to remove the formed lumps.

The resulting homemade potato starch is recommended to be poured into a glass jar with a tightly closing lid to prevent moisture.

Self-prepared potato starch will differ in color from the purchased one. Homemade starch is not white, but slightly yellow, and this is its natural color. They just add blue dye to the store, which makes it white. As a result, your product is obtained without any chemical additives and is more useful.

How to cook cornstarch?

Cooking cornstarch is similar to a homemade potato-looking recipe. Naturally, the main product is corn. It should be grinded and also filled with cool water in a 1: 1 ratio, that is, 1 tsp. corn + 1 tbsp. l. water. Whisk this whole mixture and add one glass of hot water to it. Stir everything until the mixture thickens. Then put on fire for 1 minute. This is necessary in order to get rid of the starchy aftertaste.

With such proportions, you will have a small part of the starch, about 1 glass. If you need a larger quantity, then you need to calculate in accordance with these proportions.

Making starch at home is not difficult at all. I am guided by the above recipes and, most importantly, by desire, you can make a starchy product that will be more useful and economical from the material point of view. And the dishes will become even tastier.

The homeland of the potato is South America. Today, this vegetable is mainly cultivated in China, India, USA, Ukraine, Russia. In some countries, until now, as in the old days, it is grown as an ornamental plant. On our table, it is considered the second bread.

It is hardly possible to imagine our diet without this tuber, although it is not only a nutritious product. This is a storehouse of vitamins useful for our body (PP, A, C, E, H, group B). It contains 23 micro and macro elements (potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, vanadium, copper, rubidium, boron, aluminum, etc.). In folk medicine, it is used for medicinal purposes, its peel, starch, decoctions. Today on www.site we will talk about potato starch, recipe, useful properties, benefits and harms, we will discuss their treatment.

Useful properties of starch

When we peel the tubers, we do not even realize that together with the peel we remove many useful components, which are much less in the potatoes themselves. It is in it that enzymes are contained, thanks to which potato starch is better absorbed by our body.

Starch is the main substance in potatoes and is obtained from the tuber itself. In terms of composition and structure, it belongs to carbohydrates, being a powder of white, sometimes light yellow color. In pharmacology, potato starch is used as a basis for various tablets, ointments, and powders. Due to the softening and enveloping properties, starch is recommended for diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, as it protects the intestinal mucosa when taking medications. It can also be used as an anti-inflammatory agent for ailments in the digestive system. It is used to treat burns, baths with the addition of white powder have a beneficial effect on the skin, reducing itching; for neuroses, skin diseases, children's diathesis, it is also useful. Starch is able to lower cholesterol levels in the liver and blood, speed up metabolism, lower blood pressure, and promote good digestion. and gastritis it is prescribed for dietary food in the form of jelly. The starch contains calcium, phosphorus, vitamin PP, dietary fiber, proteins, carbohydrates; its energy value is 313 kcal.

Starch recipe

To prepare potato starch, take a tuber of late-ripening varieties (they contain more starch), tubers of any shape and quality are suitable. The color of the finished product will depend on how thoroughly the tubers are washed. Then we process it, removing all damage; finely chop and pass through a juicer. You can grind it on a fine grater, but it's much more difficult.

Pour the resulting mixture with cold water, mix well. We put cheesecloth in 2-3 layers on a fine sieve, and through it we filter our potato liquid into a bowl for settling. Before discarding the gruel remaining on the gauze, rinse with a small amount of water, pouring the liquid into the same dish as the first drain. We leave for a few hours. During this time, the starch will settle to the bottom, and the excess particles will float to the surface. They must be carefully removed and, without touching the white sediment, drain the dirty water, replacing it with clean water. Stir and leave again, for 3-4 hours, so that the sediment settles. We repeat the procedure with changing the water all day until the excess specks no longer emerge. The whiteness of the starch depends on the frequency of washing.

To dry the powder, we use trays, oven sheets, spread a thin layer of starch on them, leave them in a warm, quiet place, where there is no draft or any breath of wind, otherwise the light powder will scatter. Each time its top layer dries, it is necessary to stir the powder so that the starch is completely dry. Otherwise, it will curl up into lumps and poorly stored. We transfer the finished powder to a glass dish and screw it tightly with a lid.

Starch harm

Starches belong to complex carbohydrates, and are divided into two groups. The first - natural (native), these are fruits, vegetables, cereals, nuts, legumes. The second is refined, obtained in an industrial environment. These include premium white flour, starch and products based on them. The danger is not that we consume starchy foods - cereals, beans, root vegetables. It hides in that white powder that is odorless and tasteless, that is, in refined starch. This starch, in the process of digestion, increases inulin, which can lead to pathology of the eyeball, atherosclerosis, and hormonal imbalance.

To digest potato starch, the body uses enzymes from the blood, so necessary for us in case of stress, feeling unwell, and thereby reducing their supply. In the process of heat treatment, a poisonous substance appears in products with a high starch content, which contributes to the development of oncological diseases.

This is not an idle question, because it is widely used in cooking. But it can be replaced with equally useful and affordable thickeners. These include pumpkin seed flour, rye, buckwheat; for dessert, you can use coconut flakes. For jelly, use a paste of flaxseed whole grains (boil a third of a glass of grains in a liter of water for 2 hours over low heat).

Scientists from Poland studied potato starch and confirmed its antiulcer effect. This is probably why potato starch has long been used in folk medicine as an anti-inflammatory and enveloping agent for diseases of the gastrointestinal tract. Also, scientists have found that starch enhances the synthesis of the vitamin riboflavin, which is necessary for normalizing metabolism and proper digestion. At the same time, excessively zealous consumption of starch leads to the fact that the body does not have time to process it, it begins to rot and ferment in the gastrointestinal tract, and decompose abnormally. So you should not use potato starch uncontrollably, it is important that the benefits from it do not turn into harm. Remember, the main principle is smart combination and application.

* For allergy treatment, take starch baths. For their preparation, brew 4 tablespoons of boiling water. powder with a slide. Pour them into a bath at a temperature of 37 C and take it up to 7 minutes. Then wrap in a sheet and dry while lying down. Take the first 4 baths every other day, then 3 baths in 2 days, then 2 baths in 14 days.
* When mastitis, mix 1/2 cup of sunflower oil and starch. Fold the mixture into a gauze bag and tie to your chest for 1 hour.
* In case of a burn, sprinkle the affected area with starch in half combined with baking soda.
* For erysipelas, apply a starch-on-cotton wadding to the affected area.
* For hypertension on an empty stomach for 2 weeks every day, drink dissolved 15 grams of starch in 0.5 glass of water. Monitor the pressure!