Corn flour in Chinese cooking

Corn flour in Chinese cooking

In Chinese cooking, corn flour is a must.

It is a wonderful tenderizer, especially useful for inducing a tender touch factor to meat, like chicken, beef and pork. It is extensively used to tenderize meat like chicken, pork and beef. Besides, it is equally popular in vegetable and noodle
dishes.

Since corn flour is basically corn in fine powder form, it inherits all the goodness of corn. When corn flour is mixed with water to form a liquid mixture, it is called a corn flour mixture. When corn flour mixture is cooked, it thickens and turns transparent. As it is transparent, it does not change the original color of the dish, therefore retaining the natural color of foodstuff. The thickening effect smooths the dish, thus inducing a tenderizing effect. It does not change the original taste since it is neutral or odorless.

By now, you would know why is corn flour so popular?

It is because it inherits all the natural goodness of corn, inducing a much needed tender touch to a dish, minus the risk factors inherent in chemical tenderizers!

There are two ways of preparation when corn flour is used as a tenderizer:

One way is to add corn flour directly to meat. Meat should have been marinated in advance, in the normal way with spices and soy sauce. Usually 2 tbsp of corn flour is added to 400 g of meat. This effectively seals the meat surface, thus preventing the loss of meat juices from the sliced meat. With the hot oil in the wok, add the marinated meat, stir fry briskly and vigorously. Time taken should be less than 2 minutes.

This is the dry method.

Another way is to make a liquid corn flour mixture:

To make a corn flour mixture : usually 2 tbsp of corn flour is added to 1 cup of cool chicken soup. Other seasonings like salt, pepper, tomato puree, Chinese rice wine or chili sauce can be added to this mixture.

To begin with, stir fry the main dish, meat or vegetable till just cooked (normally about 1 - 2 minutes). Then add the corn flour mixture; bring to boil and switch off the fire immediately. When it thickens, it smooths and tenderizes.
This method gives a tenderized braised dish.

Corn flour mixture braising is popular because it is convenient and effective. Just a simple addition at the final stage of cooking makes the vast difference. Take for example, cooking of lamb dishes usually takes a long time, and the end product may be fibrous due to over-cooking. Addition of corn flour mixture improves the meat texture. It is a popular practice to add corn flour mixture to casserole meat dish, like casserole lamb, casserole beef, to further improve the texture of the end products.

Corn flour is also very popularly used in soups

It is almost indispensable in the making of sharks fin soup, a very expensive Chinese soup. It takes about 1-2 days to cook a proper sharks fin soup. Cooking culminates with the addition of the corn flour mixture, to give it the smooth feel.

A very popular noodle dish is the braised Shanghai noodle. The soup stock is thickened with corn flour mixture. An egg, whisked briskly, is added to add body and to evoke the tantalizing effect to the tasty noodle.

Corn flour mixture is added to many other soups, for example, sweet corn soup, braised tofu soup, sweet and sour soup, seafood soup and so on.

It is definitely impossible to exhaust the list of dishes which uses corn flour. In my capacity, I will just mention a few popular ones. They are the ever popular

sweet and sour pork,

sweet and sour fish,

fried oyster omelet and so on. Besides, we have corn flour in the tasty

peanut butter dessert soup,

the sesame dessert soup. In fact, you can add corn flour to any dish to your liking! You only need to bear in mind to add it in moderations!

Corn flour to make a wet batter for fritters

Besides its extensive use as tenderizer, and smoother, corn flour is also needed in

fritters and croquettes. All things equal, how good is a fritter depends on how crispy it is. The batter decides the crispiness of the fritters. To get this, the secret lies in the addition of corn flour. For every 300g of wheat flour, 3 tablespoons of corn flour is added to make the batter. This is a wet batter. The added corn flour increases the hardness of the fried batter. With the wheat flour alone, batter turns out to be softer, and becomes soggy sooner.

For the dry batter, corn flour is added to wheat flour in the ratio of 1:1. The chopped pieces of meat pieces in this combination, till each piece is fully covered. Then deep dry in hot oil. Without the use of corn flour in these batter, the fritter may not be so crispy.

Corn flour is also added in small quantity, about 2 tablespoons to 300g of wheat flour, in the making of fresh wheat noodle. Addition is necessary as it makes the noodle desirably harder and not so soggy to the feel.

To conclude, to the Chinese, corn flour is a wonder powder. A small quantity of it makes the whole world of difference in a dish. Tapioca flour is a very good substitute of corn flour.

Further reference could be made on

Stir fry beef with capsicum .

for colorful picture presentations.

jjchoo (talk) 08:40, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

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