Soft and sweet tapioca pearls for all your bubble teas this summer
You’ve certainly seen this curious beverage with dark pearls parading in the hands of its enthusiasts. For several years now, Bubble Tea has been on everyone’s lips.
This Taiwanese drink has proven itself in Europe, especially when it’s hot and you need a little refreshment. It must be said that it’s a very satisfying drink to sip, with its small flavored chewy pearls!
What if I told you that you can make these pearls at home with just brown sugar, water, and tapioca starch? 🧋
What Are Tapioca Pearls?
It’s like a little treat. Tapioca pearls, or boba pearls, are the little surprise that has the same effect as the cherry on top of a cake.
While they’re just starting to gain popularity here, these soft, usually black or white little balls, also called Boba pearls, are already very popular throughout East Asia and in the US. They’re made from tapioca starch.
It’s never a bad thing “to have some in your kitchen pantry. Just” with this element, you can already make lots of good things: in the dessert section, the Vietnamese cake Bánh bò nướng, in dim sum, Banh Cuon or shrimp dumplings Ha Kao and… the famous Bubble Tea, of which you can make many flavored variations to your taste.
Take the Ube Milk Tea or the Taro Bubble Tea for example. I actually have a great recipe for preparing homemade Ube paste that goes with it, check it out if you’ve also become addicted to Bubble Tea!
Initially, the pearls are dry in the form of a paste. This might seem strange to you, since they’re not at all pasty in the mouth, they could almost be mistaken for plastic.
Don’t worry, that’s not the case. They’re cooked in water, and that’s where the magic happens: they become tender, soft, and translucent. Tapioca pearls have no flavor on their own unless sugar is added to the preparation, which will be the case in this recipe.
In Asia, they’re stored in sugar syrup to prevent them from sticking together. This inevitably makes them even sweeter.
Tapioca pearls may be a bit tedious to prepare, although there are very few ingredients, but it remains super fun to make — and drink! — even with children. By the way, if you’re convinced, you can prepare them in quantity since it’s possible to store them easily. Personally, I see only advantages.
Where Do Tapioca Pearls Come From?
These little toppings were born in Taiwan, when milk and sugar were added to tea during the Dutch colonization of the 17th century. There are two theories about their appearance.
One says that the founder of a tea house in Taichung started serving cold Chinese tea, taking inspiration from the idea of cold coffee first served in Japan in the 1980s. This was followed by a real enterprise of this new style of tea service.
The named person responsible for this enterprise, Lin Hsiu Hui, says she created the first Bubble Tea in 1988 by adding some tapioca pearls to tea during an internal meeting. This addition later became one of the franchise’s best products.
A second theory states that this famous bubble tea with tapioca pearls originated from another tea house in Tainan. The owner was supposedly inspired by white tapioca balls he had seen at a local market and added them to the tea served in his establishment. We thought Bubble Tea was something recent, but it actually has been around for quite a few years!
Variations of Tapioca Pearls
Usually, tapioca pearls are black or white, depending on the ingredients used. Sometimes, you’ll see pearls in Bubble Tea with more psychedelic and less natural colors.
Industries often add elements to give them this appearance, but there are small tricks to color them.
Making Black Tapioca Pearls
It’s possible to add cocoa powder to tapioca starch to obtain much darker pearls that will even become coal-black once cooked in brown sugar.
Otherwise, simply use black food coloring.
Making Green Tapioca Pearls
Here, you’ll need to replace brown sugar with white sugar and cocoa with matcha or pandan powder. A rather fun color for summer!
Making Blue Tapioca Pearls
Same process as the previous one, except the cocoa powder will be substituted with butterfly pea flower powder. This is a blue powder obtained from a flower with petals of the same color, native to Thailand. The advantage is that it’s natural.
Storing Tapioca Pearls
If the tapioca pearls have been dried, no problem: they can be stored in an airtight container in the freezer. If they’re fresh and soft, it’s better to wrap them in absorbent paper and place them in an airtight container.
And how about when they’re cooked? Well, they can be stored for a few days in the refrigerator. One small detail: they must be immersed in a sugar syrup. The pearls harden when cooling and then lose their soft and smooth texture.
They must be hot to have their characteristic soft and smooth texture. So to give cooked and refrigerated pearls a little boost, simply add some water to the syrup and reheat in the microwave until the syrup bubbles a bit.
Tips for Making the Best Tapioca Pearls
It goes without saying at this point that cooking is chemistry. It’s important here to weigh all your ingredients, especially with tapioca pearls. It’s not always easy: tapioca starch, very similar to cornstarch, doesn’t particularly form a dough when mixed with liquids. It becomes what’s called oobleck, a half-solid, half-liquid mixture.
This isn’t really the result we want to achieve. To avoid this state, you’ll need to mix the tapioca starch with boiling water, and then you’ll have a gelatinous mass. This is how the starting dough for Boba pearls should look.
If tapioca starch is combined with cold water, it can’t form a dough, given that it doesn’t contain gluten.
At the very end, your dough should be smooth and not too sticky. If it’s very moist, you can sprinkle additional tapioca starch to make it less sticky.
Be careful though, it shouldn’t be too dry either. There’s a happy medium. It can still adhere to the surface of your work area but be picked up cleanly without crumbling or falling apart: that’s the ideal texture.
As for cooking the pearls… Once they are indeed well cooked, drain them and immediately plunge them into cold water. This will prevent them from sticking to each other.
Homemade Tapioca Pearls for Bubble Tea
Ingredients
- 45 g of brown sugar It’s brown sugar
- 60 ml water
- 90 g of tapioca starch
Syrup
- 70 g of brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons water
Procédé
- Pour the water and brown sugar into a saucepan and bring the mixture to a boil over medium-high heat.
- Stir continuously so the sugar doesn’t burn. Once the mixture is dissolved and bubbles form, remove the saucepan from the heat.
- Add one tablespoon of tapioca starch and mix until everything is combined. (You can use a spatula or wooden spoon)
- Return the saucepan to low to medium heat and stir continuously. When the mixture starts to boil, remove the saucepan from the heat and stir until it has a sticky consistency.
- Add the remaining tapioca starch and mix gently. (Mix the starch gently so the dough doesn’t dry out)
- Once the dough has cooled enough to be worked, place it on a flat surface and knead it until all the tapioca is incorporated (at first, the dough will not be smooth and that’s normal! Don’t be rough during kneading)
- Roll the dough to form a log (about 10 cm thick)
- Divide the dough into twelve equal pieces.
- Roll each piece lengthwise so it reaches about 1.5 cm in thickness. (Dust your hands with tapioca starch and be gentle with the dough when rolling)
- Align the twelve long pieces together and cut the dough into smaller pieces (1.5 cm in length). This will puff up during cooking, don’t worry if it looks too small
- Dust your hands with tapioca starch and gently roll the small pieces until a ball forms. Place the balls in a bowl of tapioca starch. Once the balls are rolled, sift the excess starch from the bowl.
Preparation
- Heat a pot of water over high heat and pour the pearls into the pot. Once the pearls float to the surface of the boiling water, lower the heat to medium and stir constantly for 20 minutes.
- After 20 minutes, turn off the heat, cover and let rest for 20 minutes.
- Pour the water into a sieve and rinse the pearls under cold and icy water.
- In a small saucepan, heat the water and brown sugar over medium heat until the mixture dissolves and bubbles slightly.
- Add the pearls to the saucepan with the sugar and stir gently for 1 or 2 minutes
- Turn off the heat, your pearls are now ready to use
