The best way to Use Tapioca

Use this pantry staple in baking, frying, and, in fact, making boba tea and pudding.

With bubble tea mania nonetheless sweeping the nation, the highlight on tapioca is brighter than ever. However there are numerous extra makes use of for tapioca than making homemade boba or pudding. When you notice that you need to use it as a easy thickening agent and coating, tapioca will be as a lot part of your on a regular basis cooking as cornstarch or flour. Right here’s the right way to get began working with it.

What’s tapioca?

Tapioca is the identify of the extracted starch from the pulp of the cassava root. Cassava is a well-liked tuber native to South America, however will be discovered in lots of different locations with tropical climates, akin to Thailand and Nigeria. By a course of referred to as washing and pulping, cassava root is grated and the starch is soaked in water for just a few days. After some extra kneading, the starch combination is strained, sifted, and dried. Voila! You have got tapioca.

Are tapioca flour and cassava flour the identical factor?

Although each merchandise are gluten-free and are available from the identical plant, tapioca flour and cassava flour are totally different. Tapioca flour solely makes use of the starch from the pulp of the basis whereas cassava flour is flour constructed from the entire root.

How do you utilize tapioca?

Tapioca has no taste, which makes it extraordinarily versatile and helps it combine into recipes seamlessly. Tapioca flour is a vital ingredient within the Brazilian cheese bread Pão de Queijo, giving the bread its famously chewy texture. You may also use tapioca to thicken soups, stews, and gravies to get that good satisfying texture. Probably the greatest issues about tapioca as a thickener is that it could actually take up liquids earlier than they attain a boiling temperature. This implies you may thicken pie fillings shortly with out ready for them to return to temperature. Through the vacation baking season, tapioca flour is my salvation whereas making fruit pies, serving to the filling preserve its form with out muddying the colour or including an disagreeable starchy style.

Tapioca flour can also be a superb assist when frying meals. First, it creates that golden-hued crust that will get you salivating. It additionally helps create that prized shatter-worthy crackle from a primary chew of a superbly fried piece of meals, as with the Extra-Crispy Fried Fish Adam Evans serves at Automated Seafood and Oysters in Birmingham, Alabama.

You should utilize tapioca flour to make pearls, or purchase pearls. Tapioca pearls are used to make puddings, like Kay Chun’s Coconut Tapioca Pudding with Mango and Lime or Invoice Kim’s Bubble Sundaes with Peach-Blueberry Compote.

The best way to purchase tapioca

You’ll discover two foremost tapioca merchandise on the retailer; tapioca pearls or tapioca flour or starch. Tapioca flour and starch are the identical product, simply with totally different names. They are often discovered on-line or within the baking aisle of most grocery shops together with different forms of flour and thickening brokers.