Most paleo or Whole30 recipes I have seen that use starch in the breading have said you can use either arrowroot, tapioca, or potato starch. They say they are interchangeable. I couldn’t, however, find a video or pictures that supported this. I set out to see for myself if they are truly interchangeable!
Here were some of the variables of the experiment:
- I used ½ cup of starch, 1 tsp smoked paprika, ½ tsp garlic, ½ tsp salt, and 1 tsp pepper in each
- The chicken was cooked in refined coconut oil at 350 degrees
- Size large, free range eggs were used
- Air chilled chicken breast, sliced lengthwise into two cutlets was the meat used
- The recipe and process used were this one (you should try it!)
Overall, we found the following:
When frying, the chicken looked almost identical. The batters all cooked at the same rate and had the same color in the pan.
After resting, a noticeable difference was found between potato starch and the other two: arrowroot starch and tapioca starch.
- Potato starch sticks to the chicken better.
- It also has a crispier texture. This texture is not necessarily better, however. It is almost dry and gritty in comparison.
- The color of the potato starch is noticeably lighter.
We could not find any real appreciable difference between tapioca and arrowroot starch. If you absolutely forced us, we would say that we liked tapioca starch better, but it could have been the chicken was not exactly cut the same or some other difference that could be ascribed to something other than the starch used.
I hope this was helpful! It was fun for me. 😊 You can find a video about this process here
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