Gravy, starch thickeners

Starches are added to processed meats—lunch meats, hot dogs, sausages, etc.—as fillers, binders, moisture retainers, and fat substitutes. They are added to soups, sauces, and gravies as thickeners. They are used in extruded cereals and snacks to hold the shape of the material. 

Starch monophosphates are quite useful in foods because of their superior freeze—thaw stabiUty. As thickeners in frozen gravy and frozen cream pie preparations, they are preferred to other starches. A pregelatinized starch phosphate has been developed (131) which is dispersible in cold water, for use in instant dessert powders and icings and nonfood uses such as core binders for metal molds, in papermaking to improve fold strength and surface characteristics, as a textile size, in aluminum refining, and as a detergent builder. 

Starch is the main thickener in gravies, sauces, and puddings. It absorbs water, and becomes a gel when cooked. As the starch swells up with water, the amylose leaches out, and the amylopectin forms the gel. Some starches have higher amylopectin content and make better gels than those containing large amounts of amylose. 

Oatrim can be used in cheeses as a fat replacer.12 Other possible applications are in ice cream and frozen desserts, milk shakes, hot chocolate, instant-type breakfast drinks, cereals, salad dressings, soups, sauces and gravies. Oat starch in combination with oat hydrolysate or with xanthan gum has been used for thickening of sweet and sour sauces.18... 

Starches are used primarily in canned pet food, not in dry or semi-moist products. Canned pet foods with gravy require a stable, non-gelling thickener, so a highly-stabilized waxy maize starch is used. Fluidity com starches are used as gel formers for firm, cuttable loaf products.189... 

Naturally, there are wide variations in the requirements of any specific colloidal function. For example, starch is employed as a thickening agent to provide a smooth creamy texture to the following products gravy, cream soups, sauces, chop suey, Harvard beets, salad dressings, prepared mustard, cream pie fillings, fruit pie fillings, pork and beans, cream-style corn, and baby foods. 

Plant starch is found in potatoes, maize, rice, wheat and other cereals in abundant quantities, estimated to amount to 10 tons per annum worldwide. Most commercial production is from maize (corn). About two-thirds of this is used in the food industry and most of the remainder by the paper and textile industries. Food applications include flours, breakfast cereals, corn syrups and thickeners for jellies, pie fillings, gravies, salad dressings and so on. Manufactured starches include various modified varieties. 

A complex carbohydrate molecule made up of glucose units linked together in a branched chain. Amylopectin is the major component of starches from corn, rice, and barley in which it often comprises the outer layer of the starch granules. These starches make excellent thickeners for cream soups, gravies, puddings, and white sauces. 

Starches also have the ability, when mixed with water and cooked, to swell and thicken a liquid— gravies, sauces, and soups. 

Chem. Descrip. Pregeiatinized starch from waxy maize Uses Texturizer, stabiiizer for foods, esp. bakery prods, (frozen dough, cookies), cheese sauces, instant soups/sauces/gravies, food powds., saiad dressings, mayonnaise, beverage mixes thickener, stabiiizer, binder, emuisifier in foods Regulatory Kosher, Haiai certified... 

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