Casserole
Casserole, a one-vessel baked dish that is made up of three main ingredients, meat, vegetables, and a starchy binder.
For meat, you can use chopped beef, ground beef, chicken, and fish.
There’s no restriction on the type of vegetables, but the most common ones are peas, green beans, and carrots.
The starchy binder is either a few tablespoons of flour, some starchy potatoes, or a cup or 2 of pasta.
Aside from the three main ingredients, you are also required to add some type of liquid to facilitate a cooking environment. Your choice of liquid can be wine, vegetable juice, stock, beer, cider, gin, or water.
We know that one of casserole’s main ingredient is flour, but sometimes using it as a starchy binder can result in a casserole that tastes like it as well.
Here in this article, we will tell you why your casserole taste like flour and how to eliminate the flour taste from your casserole?
Why Casserole Tastes Like Flour?
There are a few reasons that make your casserole taste like flour, and all of them are detailed below.
- Not sifting your flour
Sifting a cup of flour does two things, it eliminates the lumps and incorporates a small amount of air into the flour.
Eliminating lumps is important because when flour is added to the casserole mix, most of it gets dissolved but some of the lumps still remain. Since the casserole is baked inside an oven, you cannot dissolve the remaining lumps by mixing them with a spoon. As a result, you’re left with a few uncooked lumps that make your casserole taste like flour.
- Adding to much flour
You have to follow a recipe when cooking something that requires you to add flour. Because adding too little will result in a soupy product, whereas adding too much will impart a floury taste to your casserole.
Measure the flour properly if you want to avoid making floury casseroles. Use a recipe that uses ounces or grams as a unit instead of teaspoons or tablespoons. A much better approach would be using a measuring scale by converting ounces into grams.
- Undercooking
A casserole will have a floury taste if it’s undercooked. More specifically, if the flour inside the casserole mix is undercooked. Because only by cooking the flour can you eliminate its floury taste.
The most effective solution is cooking your flour into a syrupy roux before adding it to the casserole mix. Because when making roux the flour is either completely cooked or completely burnt. This eliminates the chances of having undercooked flour inside your casserole.
The only downside is the extra fat/oil needed to cook the flour into a roux. Which is something that can be tolerated as long as the casserole taste like meat and vegetables!
- A bad recipe
All of the above issues can occur simultaneously if you’re using a bad recipe. A recipe that uses flour should specify the exact amount in ounces or grams. Any recipe that tells you to eyeball the flour amount is a bad recipe. Reference a recipe that uses proper units to specify the exact amount of ingredients needed to make a casserole dish.