Knowledge Base > Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

This event was on Tuesday, April 04, 2023 at 11:00 am Pacific, 2:00 pm Eastern

Join Chef Dan Marek in his virtual office as he welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to Ask Anything – from cooking techniques to cours… Read More.

Recorded

Question:

What can I use to thicken sauces when I don't want to use flour. Don't want to use starch either as that's too processed. Tried using arrowroot but did not like it. Is tapioca better or healthier to use?

— Simi B

Answer:

So that really depends again and kind of use method tapioca is also processed. It's know as much as like, you know, a starch like the cornstarch great thicker arrowroot actually works great as a thickener too. If you didn't like it, I'm not sure why it was a flavor of it tapioca does work too but it's also flavor and you can taste a little bit. So, um, you know, those are all great thickeners. If you're doing a sauce you might want to think about adding some other things to those sauces, you know, and how much you actually cooking down those sauces. You can also strain a sauce too. So you can actually strain some of the liquid out and use some of the thicker part that's left over to be able to have that as your thickener. The other way is to reduce the liquid or the sauce that you're doing. So at a lower heat just cook it and the whole sauce will reduce down and we'll just naturally thicken after you cook it down quite a bit. So, you know, you don't want to do it a really high heat and have boiling or anything. So you want to keep it in a simmer and the longer you do it the less liquid you actually have in the thicker. It'll actually be so just naturally. That's probably the easiest way to be able to get up is just to reduce the actual lick it and liquid and you'll get a really much more intense flavor out of it by doing that.
Dan Marek

Dan Marek

Director of Plant-Based Culinary & Dev

rouxbe.com