Tapioca Pearls

Definition

Tapioca pearls are small balls made from tapioca, the starch extracted from the root of the cassava plant (Manihot esculenta). For bubble tea they are made by mixing tapioca starch with boiling water and usually brown sugar or caramel coloring, kneading the dough, and rolling it into balls about 8-10 mm across before cooking. Dried pearls are white and opaque; black pearls get their color from brown sugar or added coloring. The chewy texture Taiwanese call QQ comes from gelatinized starch. Cooking swells the starch granules until the pearl turns translucent and soft through the center. As the pearls cool, the starch begins to retrograde: the molecules realign, and the pearl gets firm and then hard. That is why shops cook pearls in batches every few hours and discard old ones. Tapioca pearls contain no tea. They are mostly carbohydrate, with little protein or fat. Smaller pearls are used in desserts across Southeast Asia, and the large black pearls are the ones associated with boba. Popping boba is a different product, made by setting juice inside a thin alginate skin.