X is for Xanthan Gum and XXX

I am so excited! I am featured today on the Mysteristas site. If you want to know some insider information about me, this is the place! Please drop in and leave a note! http://mysteristas.wordpress.com/2014/04/28/interview-sharon-arthur-moore/

Last three letters of the alphabet, last three days of this blog challenge. I want to invite you to return after the challenge is over. I cover a wide-range of topics here, from recipes to information on my mysteries to cooking tips and techniques. I love having readers drop in and comment. Please, be a regular.

I’ll bet you wondered what I could possibly write about today. You may even have gone hunting for food terms. Perhaps you thought I would do xylitol (a sweetener, and other things) or xuxu (chayote) or xi gua (Chinese watermelon) or xiphios (Greek for swordfish) or xoconostle (green prickly pear) or xocolatl (Aztec word for chocolate) or xouba (small fish near Spain) or xom tum (a spicy Thai dish) or . . . need I go on? (And I am not clever to get a bunch more x-terms in this post?)

It was tough, yet again, choosing terms that I thought you might not know (but should) or terms that you were confused about. On to it!

X is for Xanthan Gum (ZAN-thun)

This is a term you might find on processed foods you buy. You could make your own xanthan gum, a natural carbohydrate, were you so inclined to ferment corn sugar and extract the tiny microorganism xanthan gum comes from as a by-product. Nah! Let the scientists do it.

Xanthan gum has a huge number of uses in processed foods. You will see it used as an emulsifier, a stablizer of food elements, a gelling agent, a foaming agent, a thickener, a whipping agent, and a suspending agent. Whew! That’s a lot of usefulness from one product. However, most often xanthan gum is used as an emulsifier, stablizer or thickener in foods you buy like salad dressings, gravies, ice cream, sauces, or dairy products like sour cream and yogurt. When people are cooking gluten-free baked goods, they likely use xanthan gum as a gluten substitute to give volume so the bread rises. Check your labels. Betcha you’re eating xanthan gum.

X is for XXX

This was tough. How many ‘X’s” should I put up because this is what you will find on packages of confectioner’s sugar. The number of X’s refers to the number of times sugar is ground to make it finer and finer particles. X is the designator of powdered sugar aka confectioner’s sugar. You probably use XXX or XXXX, but ultra-fine powdered sugar is 10x.

You could indeed grind your granulated sugar over and over and over to make your own confectioner’s sugar, but odds are you don’t have the tools in your kitchen to get as fine a grind as the commercial sugars.

If you do decide to make your own, use your coffee grinder or even a mortar and pestle. You should also add an anti-caking agent such as cornstarch, flour, or calcium phosphate as commercial brands do. Because of these additives, powdered sugar is not a good beverage sweetener!

Some other sugars you may have seen are caster sugar aka baker’s sugar or superfine sugar. Caster sugar has grains about half the size of granulated sugar. Or you may have come across snow powder (aka snow sugar) which has other additives like dextrose, starch, and anti-binding agents.

Just an FYI: the British call powdered or confectioner’s sugar, icing sugar and it is made without flour or cornstarch.