Warabi-ko (bracken starch)

Fécule de fougère (warabi-ko)

What it is

A bracken rhizome is only about five percent starch, and washing that out is slow enough that pure hon-warabiko has run to twelve to fifteen thousand yen a kilo, some thirty times the price of sweet potato starch. Almost every packet sold as warabimochiko is mostly sweet potato or tapioca with a little bracken in it for the grey.

In the kitchen

Cook it hard. Whisk it cold with the water and sugar, then stir over medium heat past the cloudy stage and keep going four or five minutes after it turns clear — stopped at translucent it leaves a starchy tongue and a gel that weeps.

Goes with

Kinako Okinawan black sugar Matcha Black sesame White sugar Mizuame

Same species

Warabi (bracken shoot)

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