6 Best Potato Flour Substitutes

Potatoes are vegetables that are part of many dishes. They come in all shapes and sizes and the most common potato side dish is french fries. They are eaten all over the world and are the most common potato form.

However, potatoes are not necessarily used only as chips, mashed potatoes or baked, but also you can make flour out of them. It’s commonly used and you can use the flour to make many recipes.

You can make it at home and use it as a great thickener in your recipes. But what if you don’t have it at home or can’t make it at home, can you use any other substitutes?

The best substitutes for Potato Flour are cornstarch, tapioca flour, arrowroot, rice flour, quinoa flour and mashed potatoes.

Further, follow the guideline on how to make homemade flour and also how potato flour can be replaced in Chinese cuisine.

Substitutes for Potato Flour

Read down below, as I’ll share with you some of the best substitutes for potato flour. Also, depending on what you’ll need the substitutes, I’ll divide them as thickeners, general baking or bread baking.

To substitute the potato flour as a thickener you’ll need equal amounts of these substitutes:

1. Cornstarch

If you are on a gluten-free diet then cornstarch is the flour you need. It’s a carbohydrate extracted from the endosperm of corn. It is used in many households as a type of flour in their cooking.

When to use?

Use it in recipes as a thickening agent for marinades, glazes, sauces, pies, and many other desserts. It’s a good substitute and it brings out the thickness in the texture.

2. Tapioca Flour

Another gluten-free flour for baking that is actually very popular. This is flour that will improve the texture of the goods that you are baking. It’s actually a very good alternative to traditional wheat flours when you are baking. This type of flour helps bind gluten-free recipes and makes the texture even better.

When to use?

Use it to make sauces, pies, and soups. It’s a very good substitute because it has no discernible taste or smell and it never discolors the ingredients.

3. Arrowroot

One of the most frequent gluten-free products that are very commonly used in almost every kitchen. It is a great thickener and it has no taste and leaves the food clear and glossy. It blends with other flours. It’s used 1:1 ratio when replacing in baking.

When to use?

Use it to bake pastry, pizza, something sweet like pies, and those kinds of recipes.

For baking in general

4. Rice Flour

Made from ground raw rice. It is a very good alternative in cakes and biscuits. Another important thing is that it is gluten-free and is used to make bread.

When to use?

You can use this type of flour to make rice noodles, pancakes or to thicken soups and stews.

5. Quinoa Flour

It is made from grinding quinoa seeds and it is easily adapted to a variety of recipes. Unlike the other type of gluten-free flours, there is no need to add extra gums like gum or guar gum to make adapt the quinoa in the baking recipes.

When to use?

Quinoa flour can be added in soups and stews to thicken the texture. Also, you can use it as a protein powder in shakes and smoothies.

6. Mashed Potatoes

This is the best substitute that consists of potatoes in its structure that are mashed potatoes. This will bring out the potato flavor along with all the nutrients to get the almost same texture as you used potato flour.

The only difference is in the water content because the mashed potatoes bring a lot of moisture into your baking goods. Actually there is no easy way to measure how much extra water to add to your dough.

In some recipes, the extra moisture will not make much difference, but you have to be careful not to ruin your texture.

Another important thing to note is that if you are using mashed potatoes as a replacement, reduce the liquid to compensate for the moisture. Use a food dehydrator if you want to bring the mashed potatoes and even better substitute for the potato flour.

When to use?

Use it in recipes that will bring out the thickness in the texture like soups and stews. Also, use any type of dishes that require potato flour as a thickener.

Substitute for potato flour in Chinese cooking:

As I previously mentioned, cornstarch is a very common substitute for potato flour. This is especially true in Chinese cuisine. The cornstarch is an essential ingredient for almost any Chinese dish. Actually, it’s flavorless and easily one of the vital ingredients with multiple uses. It is essential because of its availability and convenience.

Main uses:

Use cornstarch to:

Marinate meats and bring velvet texture after stir-frying.
Drefganing foods that are deep-fried and this type of flour brings a good crisp.
This type of flour actually brings out rounding chewy doughs, noodles, and baking goods.

Potato flour: home-made and how to use it?

Potato flour is actually a heavy flour that has a really strong potato flavor. It is made from the whole potato including the skin. There is an option to use them raw or cooked. Then the mixture is left to dry and ground into flour.

The potato flour contains 1% protein and 5.9 % of fiber. Actually the potato flour is very commonly confused with potato starch, but they are not the same and can not be substituted for each other. The flour is produced from an entire dehydrated potato, whereas the scratch is from the scratch only.

When to use?

This type of flour is not used as the main flour in baking because it absorbs too much liquid and makes the product gummy. So use it in recipes for baking bread and rolls.

If you use it in smaller amounts it works well and holds together the products that you are cooking with. It works best in small amounts in gluten-free flour blends.

Also, use it as an ingredient in potato-based recipes to give more richness and texture of the potato flavor.

Home-made potato recipe:

There are two ways you can make potato flour from scratch. As I previously mentioned that potatoes can be used cooked and raw.

So, all you’ll need is around 4 kg of potatoes that will produce about a kilo of flour and a dehydrator.

With cooked potatoes:

If you are using cooked potatoes, firstly you need to cook them well and mash them. Spread the potatoes on a dehydrator and let them dry for 12 to almost a day.

It actually takes a lot of time to do this process. After they are dried, run them through a blender and store it in an airtight container.

Raw potatoes:

If you decide to go with raw potatoes, then peel them off and cut them into thin slices in a larger pan of boiling water. Then, put the dehydrator for around 12 hours at the bottom. Crush it or blend it and your flour is ready to be stored in containers.