What Is Wheat starch and How Can I Use It?
Here's everything worth knowing about wheat starch and how to pick it, what it is, how to store it, and what to use instead, plus 1 recipe to cook tonight.
Key Points
- Wheat flour with the gluten washed out; a pure white starch with no stretch.
- Cooks glassy and chewy, the secret to translucent dim sum wrappers like har gow.
- Scald it with boiling water; cold water leaves the dough crumbly and cloudy.
- Usually blended with a little tapioca starch for chew and crack-free wrappers.
- Still from wheat, so it is not gluten-free; store it dry and sealed.
What is wheat starch?
Wheat starch is what is left after the gluten is washed out of wheat flour: a fine, pure-white starch with no stretch and almost no protein. It is not the same as wheat flour, and the missing gluten is the whole point.
Cooks in Chinese kitchens prize it for one job above all, the translucent wrappers on steamed dim sum. Cooked, it turns glassy and chewy rather than bready, which is exactly the look har gow and crystal dumplings need.
It sits with the starches on the flour hub, well apart from the wheat flours it comes from.
How to Use It
The signature use is dumpling dough. You scald wheat starch with boiling water, which gelatinizes it on the spot and lets the dough be rolled paper-thin and pleated, the method laid out in Wheat Starch Wrappers for Dumplings.
It is usually cut with a little tapioca starch, which adds chew and keeps the cooked wrapper from cracking. On its own wheat starch also thickens sauces, though cornstarch is more common for that.
The key thing to remember: boiling water is not optional. Mixed with cold water the dough will not come together or turn translucent.
Substitutes
For dumpling wrappers there is no clean swap, since the see-through effect depends on this exact starch. A blend leaning on tapioca starch comes closest in texture, but expect a chewier, less delicate result.
For plain thickening, cornstarch or potato starch both work and are easier to find.
Note that wheat starch still comes from wheat, so it is not gluten-free; people avoiding gluten should skip it.
Buying and Storing
Look for it in Asian groceries or online, labeled wheat starch and sometimes "non-glutinous" flour, a soft, bright-white powder. Do not grab plain wheat flour by mistake; the two behave nothing alike.
Stored dry in a sealed container, it keeps for a year or more, since the starch carries little of the oil that makes whole flours go stale. Keep moisture out and it stays loose and usable.
Quick facts
- In Chinese
- 小麦淀粉
- British (UK) term
- Wheat starch
- en français
- amidon de blé
- en español
- almidón de trigo
Recipes using wheat starch
There are 1 recipe that contain this ingredient.
Wheat Starch Wrappers for Dumplings
Translucent wheat starch dumpling wrappers for ha gow and fun gwau. Just 4 ingredients and 20 minutes for the stretchy, crystal-clear dough used in authentic dim sum.
