How to make starch from potatoes at home

Starch - a product needed in any kitchen, They sell it in every grocery store. If you wish, you can prepare a healthy product at home with your own hands, without the chemical additives used in its industrial production. Obtaining a pure product is not a very labor-intensive process.

We'll tell you how to make starch from potatoes at home in this article.

Homemade potato starch

If, after purchasing and sorting a large volume of potatoes, there are a lot of mechanically damaged and partially spoiled tubers left, do not rush to throw them away - prepare homemade starch from them with your own hands.

The process of obtaining potato starch is simple: you can find the means at hand in any kitchen, and besides potatoes, you only need a small amount of water.

Advantages and disadvantages

The main advantage of home-made potato starch is that it is environmentally friendly, without the use of chemical additives. Homemade product is not as snow-white as store-bought has a natural yellowish tint. This is explained by the fact that blue food coloring is mixed into starch prepared for mass consumption, due to which the powder becomes white.

Disadvantages of homemade starch:

• high consumption of potatoes used for preparing starch - from 2.6-2.8 kg of tubers only 100 g of dry powder is obtained;
• It takes a lot of time to prepare a homemade product, drying takes up to 72 hours;
• To speed up the drying process in the room, it is necessary to maintain optimal temperature and air humidity - with high humidity, the powder will not dry to the desired consistency.

Which potatoes are suitable?

To prepare the product at home, choose varieties with high starch content – 17-20%.

The following varieties have the following characteristics: Aurora (17.5%), Elizabeth (18%), Odysseus (17%), Zhuravinka (19%), Lorch (20%), Treasures (17%), Fairy tale (17%), Voltman (19%), Bashkirsky (19.7%).

Preference is given to mid-season varieties, since during the summer season their tubers have time to fully ripen and accumulate a sufficient amount of glucose, which is converted into starch during photosynthesis.

Tubers of late-ripening varieties that did not have time to ripen before the onset of cold weather are harvested insufficiently ripe, and their starch content is below normal.

Selection and preparation

Experienced gardeners have noticed that tubers with brown skin and yellowish flesh contain more starch - they crumble when cooked. Young, freshly dug potatoes and old, soft, even completely wrinkled, mechanically damaged potatoes are suitable for preparing the product. Frozen, rotten tubers with dark spots in the core are not suitable. Small, unripe potatoes are also not suitable - they contain no more than 10-12% starch.

To determine which tubers contain the maximum amount of starch, cut them open and rub the pulp into your palm. If, after drying, a powdering effect is felt on the hand, and a characteristic creaking sound is heard after squeezing the palm, such tubers contain a large amount of pure substance.

Another option: leave the cut tubers for 25-30 minutes; after a while, a starchy film forms on the cleaned surface. The higher the content of useful substances in root vegetables, the faster it is formed.

Before preparing the product, vegetables are thoroughly washed, sprouts are removed, peeled, and damaged areas are cut off.

How to make potato starch at home

Preparing the product at home is a simple process. All you need is the right amount of potatoes and free time. Starch has no taste, so the variety chosen does not matter.

What is necessary

To make the powder you will need:

• potato;
• 2 transparent containers;
• any chopper - grater, meat grinder, vegetable cutter, juicer, blender;
• clean cold water;
• gauze or fine sieve;
• napkins or paper towels.

Step-by-step instruction

The cooking technology is simple:

1. Wash the tubers with running water. Damaged areas, remove rot. Peel the potatoes. You can use unpeeled tubers, but thoroughly washed with a clean kitchen sponge - in this case the powder will turn out darkish.
2. Grind the peeled vegetables using improvised means (grater, meat grinder or others) to a paste-like state. When grinding, the integrity of the cells is disrupted, which allows starch to be released freely.
3. Pour cold water over the potato mixture and stir. When stirred, starch from the potato mass is released into the water and floats in the form of a suspension. The use of hot water is not allowed, since starch tends to dissolve immediately in it.
4. Leave the mixture for 20 minutes for the useful product to settle to the bottom of the container.The light sediment will be clearly visible through the transparent walls of the container.
5. Place a fine sieve on a second container and pour the resulting mixture onto it. Squeeze out the potato pulp by hand and leave it on a sieve for 15 minutes until the juice has completely drained. After this, the vegetable mass is removed. The liquid that drains into the container will gradually acquire a brown tint.
6. When the released starch settles to the bottom of the container, drain off most of the cloudy water. A dark-colored sediment will remain at the bottom.
7. Pour cold, clean water over the sediment and wait 10-15 minutes for the starch to settle to the bottom. The water will no longer be as dark as when it first settled.
8. Drain off the cloudy layer and fill the sediment with a new portion of water. Repeat the procedure until the water becomes clean and transparent and the sediment turns white.
9. Line a tray or baking sheet with 4-5 layers of napkins or paper towels. Mix the sediment well with a small amount of remaining water and quickly pour it onto a layer of paper before it settles again. Paper towels will absorb excess liquid, and the starch will remain on the surface. The lower wet layers of towels must be replaced with dry ones until all the liquid is absorbed.
10. Spread the white sediment evenly over the surface of the paper and leave to dry at room temperature.
11. To speed up the drying process, transfer the starch with a spoon from damp paper to a sheet of foil. Stir the mixture periodically with a spoon so that it dries evenly.

The product is dried in a room with low air humidity. The substance is periodically kneaded with your fingers until the lumps are crushed, mixed, and spread in a thin layer over the surface of the foil. You can determine whether a substance has dried by touch. When you knead it with your fingers, it will crunch softly. They also roll the product with a rolling pin, if a crunch is heard, the starch has completely dried out.

Reference. It will take 40-50 minutes to prepare the raw materials; it will take about 72 hours to dry the powder at room temperature.

The resulting homemade starch is poured into a plastic food container or glass jar with a hermetically sealed lid to prevent condensation. It is recommended to store the container in a dry place.

Cooking methods

You can shred potatoes using a grater with large holes. Vegetables are first peeled and cut into small pieces.

To turn the tubers into a homogeneous mass, you can use a meat grinder. Peeled vegetables are first cut into pieces and then passed through the device. In this case, not only the vegetable mass will come out of the meat grinder, but also potato juice will flow out at the same time.

If the starch drying process needs to be accelerated, use an oven. To do this, the white sediment that has fallen to the bottom of the container is laid out in a thin layer on a baking sheet covered with thick clean paper and placed in the oven. The thinner the layer, the sooner the moisture will evaporate. The oven temperature should not exceed +40°C. It takes several hours for the product to dry completely.

Attention! At temperatures above +40°C, starch turns into paste.

When the powder on the baking sheet becomes crumbly, knead it with a rolling pin to crush the formed lumps or simply rub the grains with your fingers.

For use in home baking, the finest powder consistency is used. To finally bring the resulting product to the state of powder, it is ground in a coffee grinder.

Conclusion

A simple way to make potato starch yourself at home allows you to get a better quality product. Starch prepared with your own hands will not raise doubts about its naturalness. This process does not require a lot of expenses: from 1 bucket of potatoes you get 1.3-1.5 kg of homemade clean product.