Rice, wheat, potato, tapioca just to name a few. Many kinds, many uses. Not much flavor on its own but essential as the bases for a noodle or a "cake" or thickener.
Regular rice flour
This is used in recipes as law bok go (fried radish cake) and steamed rice noodles
Glutinous rice flour (sweet rice flour)
It contains neither gluten nor sugar. It is made from a type of short grain rice that has a high starch content that makes it sticky when cooked. Great for sticky desserts. It is used in recipes like mochi, new year's cake, sesame balls, and tong yuen.
Tapioca starch
It is used to make recipes like some dim sum wrappers that are more clear in color and stretchy in texture.
Wheat starch
I had to look this one up. Wheat starch is different from wheat flour. More processing. This is the simple starch made from the endosperm of a wheat grain. Very fine powder usually used as a thickener. All the protein has been washed away so there is no gluten and has very little elasticity. I've used it in some dumpling skin wrappers and homemade steamed rice noodles.
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