How to Make a Cornstarch Slurry

This post may contain affiliate links. See my privacy policy for details.

A lot of recipes tend to call for a cornstarch slurry to be mixed in at the last minute to thicken. But how exactly do you make a flour or cornstarch slurry?

For more helpful guides on cooking at home, why not learn how to make an Egg Wash or make some Homemade Bisquick instead? 

Table of Contents

1. How to Make a Cornstarch Slurry
2. Flour or Cornstarch Slurry Ingredients
3. How To Make Flour or Cornstarch Slurry
4. Differences Between Flour & Cornstarch Slurries
5. How To Make Sure Your Mixture Thickens Properly
6. Don’t forget to PIN THIS RECIPE to your COOKING Board and remember to FOLLOW ME ON PINTEREST!
7. How to Make a Cornstarch Slurry Recipe

How to Make a Cornstarch Slurry

Making a cornstarch slurry is a really simple thing but requires a bit of understanding to do it properly. In fact, most people that frequently use starch slurries learned how to do it from a young age, so much so that it becomes second nature to them.

Common in Asian cuisines, starch slurries allow you to really easily thicken a soup or broth without having to prepare a roux beforehand and cook it at the very beginning of the recipe.

Thanks to the thickening power of either flour or cornstarch, what was previously a thin liquid mixture can instead be thickened into a more pleasant texture.

If you don’t know how to make a slurry yourself, it is absolutely a mandatory thing for any aspiring cook to learn at some point.

Flour or Cornstarch Slurry Ingredients

Make sure you look at the recipe card at the very bottom for the exact amounts.

• Cornstarch (or flour)

• Water

How To Make Flour or Cornstarch Slurry

• Combine the two ingredients until smooth and creamy

• Whisk rapidly into whatever soup or stew you need to thicken

• Continue to cook the dish until the sauce has thickened properly

Differences Between Flour & Cornstarch Slurries

There are so many different recipes that call for some kind of starch slurry to help thicken everything. However, there is never really any explanation for when you should use flour slurry or a cornstarch one.

Though they are made of different types of grain, thanks to the relatively small amount of the slurry you actually use in a recipe, there isn’t really any kind of taste difference.

The main difference is the amount of further cooking that they require. A cornstarch slurry can thicken anything you put into it as soon as it has become completely mixed in and heated.

A flour slurry, meanwhile, requires a good amount of cooking before it actually starts to thicken. This is because the flour needs time to gelatinize before it can really thicken anything.

This is the reason that most recipes prefer to use cornstarch slurries rather than flour, though flour is obviously a lot more common than cornstarch in most homes.

A key thing to keep in mind for those that don’t live in the USA – cornstarch is sometimes called “cornflour” in other countries. Cornstarch should look like a very fine white powder, whereas cornmeal is the rougher, larger pieces of ground-up corn.

How To Make Sure Your Mixture Thickens Properly

Most recipes that call for a starch slurry usually just say to mix it together and then dump it into your recipe, completely ignoring how to actually do it properly.

The key thing to do to make sure that your starch mixture thickens properly is to make sure that the starch is completely and totally mixed together before you use it.

A lot of people just mix it together using their fingers, but you can also use a small teaspoon or even a tiny whisk to get everything incorporated. If you don’t mix it properly, you can wind up with dry bits of starch remaining in your recipe, which means that it won’t thicken your food at all.

Looking for more delicious Kitchen Tips? Try these out:

• How to Spatchcock a Chicken

• How to Ripen Bananas

Hope that helps someone in the kitchen!

Love,

Karlynn

Don’t forget to PIN THIS RECIPE to your COOKING Board and remember to FOLLOW ME ON PINTEREST!