expandex™ Modified Tapioca Starch is a modified tapioca starch designed specifically for use in the manufacture of low fat baked foods. The unique texture imparted to the food by this ingredient permits recipes with less fat and fewer calories to taste very similar to higher fat, high calorie alternatives. All the benefits of tapioca starch, plus an enhanced texture that yields desirable end-use characteristics – expandex™ Modified Tapioca Starch replaced some of the sugar in a recipe for low-fat cookie bars.
tapioca starch it’s a really simple ingredient you probably have it in your pantry and you probably already work with it but it might not be as simple as you think it is and today on WTF we’re gonna look at all of our types of tapioca starch and show you how to make a great tapioca noodle [Music] hello and welcome to WTF where we transform food here in the modernist pantry Test Kitchen I’m chef Scot Guerin and I’m Jani Wang one of the owners of modernist pantry here on WTF every week we transform food with fun ingredients techniques new recipes and if you like what you see remember comment subscribe and ring the bell they’ll make sure that you’re gonna be notified of our fresh content it comes out every single Tuesday out of our Test Kitchen and this week Scott and I we’re going to be talking about tapioca starch and you probably already have some in your pantry and we thought it was kind of a simple thing to talk about but in reality there are many different types of tapioca starch –iz and they do all different types of stuff so today we’re gonna cover you know what exactly are the different types of tapioca starch is as well as I know Scott has a great new tapioca noodle dish that he can’t wait to share with you yeah so Scott maybe we can start off with you know like what is tapioca starch and what are some of the different varieties that people might see out there in our store sure so tapioca is going to sound familiar to a lot of people tapioca pudding tapioca pearls things like that boba all sorts of different things use tapioca now what these are the powders are not you know they’re not pearls in there it’s a powder so if you can take that you can eventually make the pearls if you wanted to you can you know make a dough out of it you know cut them into small little beads and then dry them again to make the pearls but just know that the the tapioca starch is not going to come in like pearl form or anything like that so it’s not the exact same as if you were to buy tapioca pearls now there is a bunch of differences between the types of tapioca and tapioca comes from a root cassava or yuca depending on where you get it it’s just two different names for it and it’s a starch that is extremely elastic when it gelatinizes and it has a lot of great qualities that can be modified to do many many different things yeah and what exactly I know that we sell several ingredients we have in here our expand XR rat the tapioca starch and they often them we have a bunch more that are not on this table and they usually go by the term modified tapioca starch what exactly does that mean and how how do people I guess classify it you know in terms of usage sure so the first one is just going to be tapioca starch tapioca starch is just kind of the raw tapioca starch that’s what you’re going to be able to make pretty much all the other modified ones out of and to modify them they basically just focus on a distinct quality of the tapioca since it does so many different things that has a really great you know elasticity it’s a great thickener so they kind of just modify it to you know okay for let’s say our ultratex or ultra Spurs the tapioca based ones are just for thickening properties but if we’re going to be doing something for gluten-free baking like with the expand X or the rapid tapioca starch those are for that elasticity to stand in for the gluten and then also into ends orbit this is one that people have a misconception with is that okay well this is tapioca maltodextrin I can just use any tapioca for it right because this is one that’s very common it’s a very cool application where you can take oils and turn them into powder so no you can’t take tapioca starch straight up and turn it in it oils into powder you probably could but it’s not going to taste good it’s going to be extremely gritty but you want to use Inns orbit which is specifically for turning oils into powder which we have here we have some of our chili oil powder that we had in one of our earlier episodes so yeah it when modifying they pinpoint kind of a specific quality of the tapioca they focus on that and that’s what you get out of it yeah and if you’re kind of wondering if you’re thinking about you know one might be a good application that you want and you’re not sure how to decide well we’re going to do is we’re going to have a chart up on our blog blog top modernist pantry com that essentially will list out all the different types of tapioca starch as we have and what an appropriate application for them might be so check that out for sure I think it’s going to be a great reference just to make sure that you get the right ingredient because you don’t want to get ultratex you know in order to do your gluten-free baking when you should be getting expand X where I’m free yes so I think once we kind of talk about that I think one other things that people always ask is can I just interchange them and I feel like the answer is no on that but if somebody only has one like you know because I know including free baking a lot of people use regular tapioca starch already but then we always recommend to them hey try one of these modified ones what are some of the benefits you get when you switch to a modified starch so when you switch to a modified starch just like I said before it’s modified to specifically work for what you’re trying to do so like I said the rapid tapioca starch or the expand X is going to be like the best part of that elasticity where you could replace the tapioca starch one-for-one with those and get a better result once again these are all testing recipes so it’s going to be oh I like this but I like a little bit more maybe I like 50/50 right so it’s gonna be a lot of testing on your own part but just know that some of them not going to work the same way so you can’t take Ann’s orbit and add it to a gluten free baking that does nothing right because it doesn’t not focusing on that elasticity it’s focusing on the oil absorption parts of it so just knowing and I think the charts really gonna help just knowing what you’re looking for and when you find out what you’re looking for this is the product that you need and if there’s any you know obviously for gluten free baking there will be a few of them for you know turning oils into powers there’s going to be one of them so you’ll be able to see on that chart the best way to kind of utilize the product yeah and once you’re on our blog we have done you know specific episodes around expand X around ends orbit and around gluten free baking and all that so if you want recipes for dough’s those are all be available on the blog so we kind of figure out for today for tapioca episode we will focus more on the regular tapioca starch and do have a cool recipe around that do you want to talk about what you prepare today Scott sure so I took a Laotian dish that’s you know a very very simple almost chicken noodle soup but extremely flavorful and I wanted to show you how to do because it uses a tapioca noodle so what I did is I took tapioca starch and rice flour and I made a dough now it’s different than making a dough with let’s say you know wheat flour where you just add the water the gluten sucks it up and it becomes nice and stretchy when you add water to the tapioca starch and rice flour and it’s not hot the it’s just going to barely mix in almost like you’re mixing it into corn right when you mix it into cornstarch its it kind of settles out and things like that so the way you make this dough is you actually put in boiling hot water okay when you add in the boiling hot water it cooks the starches and as it cooks the starches they become extremely elastic right so you can see how stretchy this dough is so this is oh yes yeah we were joking before it looks like a shamrock right so it’s extremely elastic but this dough is cooked it’s great cuz then you can slice it into the noodle size that you need okay and you have these really beautiful chewy noodles that are also gluten free if that’s something that you’re looking for right so they go well with any soup they really suck up that you know flavor they’re extremely neutral in flavor on their own too so I’m just gonna get these into our water here just to boil so really simple they’ve you know with a little bit of rice flour just on the outside or tapioca starch on the outside they’ll be completely separate so you can see just cooking them like a normal noodle so in this bowl I’m just going to put a little bit of the the broth in the broth is chicken so very simple chicken a tiny bit of soy sauce if that’s what you want if you want just regular salt that’s totally fine lemongrass lime leaves and galangal if you can’t find lime leaves that’s fine if you just do some lemon or lime zest and if you can’t find galangal which is common in like you know Asian markets things like that some grocery stores but very few of them you can just use ginger they’re super common so just know the Flair will be slightly different but it’s going to taste delicious on its own so I’m gonna put about 8 ounces of the broth in here and how long do you sit they cook that broth for to you about an hour ok so once I make the chicken stock that I cooked you know I infuse it with the flavors for about an hour so however long it takes you to make the chicken stock you can just use store-bought if you really want to we could see our noodles right here are actually coming together really beautifully they absorb some of that water they grow a little bit they’re really nice so let’s let them cook a little bit longer because as we cook they’re going to firm up and with this dish there’s going to be a few accompaniments you just have some sliced scallion some crispy garlic which all these recipes will be unblocked and then just some chicken legs or chicken thighs that we have that we just simply roast it off so really really simple dish to do so these are looking pretty good I’m gonna take them out now so they hold up really well nice they kind of have like a wooden noodle feel to them yeah so you could slice them however thick you want they can go much thinner than this but we really like kind of the texture of a thicker noodle with this dish it just feels a little bit more hearty slide them in there splashing this dish does have a name it’s called Khao pxn I just didn’t want to butcher it so I practice it over and over before the shoot today mm-hmm okay so we have those and let’s just get into just very simple garnish I’m going to start with my chicken it’s nice to roast it off to the side doesn’t have to be difficult it’d be nice and simple that’s why scallions and put as much or as little as you want and then my crispy garlic and I’d like to just kind of flip these right on top of the other two so that they stay nice and crispy it’s very simple that’s pretty much it but I wanted to show something that we could do with the chili oil powder so if you wanted to you can then shake your chili oil powder if you like a little bit of spice to your dish right you can put it in there and as it hits the the hot soup it’s going to start to melt because the moisture will then turn that chili oil powder back into an oil and you get a nice little bit of the the spice from that chili oil so janie want to you can absolutely have a little bit here I will and I love the colors on this and how beautiful looks right now and if you really give it a little stir and kind of bring it all together – if you get all that you know the oil will start to kind of return back to an oil and it really does take one noodle here’s mmm super good you get a nice chew from that noodle and it’s not gritty or anything even though it has like rice flour in it because you are cooking that you’re cooking it twice actually the first time you put it in the boiling water in to make the dough roll it out and then you cook it again and you don’t get any of that grittiness it’s just a super smooth noodle it has a nice chew to it and it’s gluten free yeah and this stock is also incredibly light so it makes a great easy meal I love I love how this days so I think one thing is someone’s like oh I already have some tapioca starch where I’m going to pick up some of this drewett’s Grove organic tapioca starch what are some of the other ways that they can use it aside from making a delicious noodle so it can be used in many different things sometimes it can be used in place of cornstarch I’ve seen or potato starch for many different dishes so it really depends on what you’re trying to do and if you’re already using a starch in the day – then you know replace it with a tapioca starch but like we said before if you’re doing gluten-free we have one specifically for that so there’s going to be a chart like we said so definitely check that out yeah that’s really fun you can get this particular recipe and all the other recipes on the blog and there’s also going to be a video on Instagram it will show Scott making the noodles from start to finish so if you want to kind of see that process happening it’s a really cool thing so you can check that out and as always leave your comments questions below if there’s anything you want us to cover though you haven’t seen leave that as well because people do toss and suggestions and though we do make it happen so from here into modernist and Ruth Test Kitchen I’m Jani Weiss and I’m stuck [Music] thank you so much for watching and if you haven’t already like comment and subscribe and hit that Bell so you get notified when we drop a new video to get today’s recipes in all of our recipes remember to go to blogged on modernist pantry com will you get recipes ask a chef’s tips and tricks and more and if you haven’t already tell a friend so they know what’s going on here at WTF and as always to get any of the ingredients you saw today you can go to modernist pantry comp to shop and until next time we’ll be here in the Test Kitchen helping you create memorable and magical experiences [Music]