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I made the Purple Sweet Potato Pie. We love the taste and it is a beautiful looking pie but I was wondering if I could use tapioca starch to give the filling more body.

Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Recorded

This event was on July 2, 2024

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 course-specific questions, to how to turn your cooking passion into profit or simply hearing the perspective of a professional chef, Chef Dan is ready to answer them all.

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Question

Ana Crowther

I made the Purple Sweet Potato Pie. We love the taste and it is a beautiful looking pie but I was wondering if I could use tapioca starch to give the filling more body.?

Answer

Yes, that you absolutely can. Tapioca star starch will actually help to fill that out a little bit more and keep it, uh, a little more of a sliceable, uh, texture too. Sometimes sweet potato pies purple or, you know, orange soup potatoes, um, can be a little more liquidy than most people want to when they're setting. Uh, I always serve those pies cold to make sure that, uh, you know, I have a nices sliceable texture, but by adding a just, you know, a table spoon, tapioca starch to the filling, um, when cooking, it will definitely help to set it a little bit more full to be able to give it more body. So you're on the right track there. Um, that's totally, you know, something that, um, I would add to a sweet potato pie to be able to let it set as well.

Dan Marek

Director of Plant-Based Culinary & Dev

*Dan Marek* is a chef educator who has been teaching vegan and vegetarian cooking for over 15 years. At Rouxbe, he is our Director of Plant-Based Culinary and Development where he helps develop content, classes and builds courses for many of our partners. Dan is a board member of Slow Food Austin, the Institute of Child Nutrition, and Conscious Capitalism. He has earned his BA in Journalism from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University and holds certificates in Nutrition from Cornell University. Prior to his role with Rouxbe, Dan worked with Whole Kids Foundation training teachers and food service at schools across the country on nutrition and culinary best practices. He also worked as a Healthy Eating Educator at Whole Foods Market’s flagship store in Austin, TX, was a personal chef for some of Austin’s elite business people, taught classes in culinary techniques at Austin Community College, The Natural Epicurean, and Le Cordon Bleu. Dan also regularly volunteers cooking or speaking about nutrition for the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Marathon Kids, Health Alliance for Austin Musicians, and the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Austin and Central Texas.