Tapioca balls

Tapioca balls, also known as boba (a transliteration of the word “bubble”) or “pearls” in bubble tea, are mainly composed of starch, specifically tapioca powder. Some boba are five-to-ten-inch starch balls, consisting of sweet potato powder, potato powder or jelly. By adding different ingredients—water, sugar and seasoning, tapioca balls vary in color and in texture.

The original color of tapioca balls was white, but there are now black ones, which are very popular and called “pearls”, in which manufacturers put brown sugar to enhance the sweetness.

Jelly Tapioca Pearls (or Frog Egg Drink)

“Jelly tapioca pearls” is one of the most famous night market refreshments. It gets its Chinese name, “frog eggs,” from its white appearance in the middle after cooking. Actually, “frog eggs” are “tapioca.” In Shilin Night Market, vendors who sell the drink usually add some syrup or creamer before serving. Vendors in other night markets put jelly tapioca pearls on top of shaved ice.

The first “frog eggs” were made of processed wild spikenard from “Little Kui Brand.” However, now frog eggs are made with tapioca powder, which people love. Most people assume frog eggs have always been made from tapioca.

The Origin of Wu’s Frog Egg Drink (The Authentic Frog Egg Drink) The old tea shop where frog egg drink originated is located in Lane 114 across from the Shilin Yangmin Theater. The shop has been serving the drink for 37 years. The drink was named in 1978 by Mr. Wu Kun Wang (Wu), who is also the inventor of the drink. He cooked the tapioca balls along with brown sugar water until they were covered entirely by the syrup, which ended up looking like frog eggs. On a hot summer day in 1978, Mr. Wu came up with an idea to put tapioca balls, which were only served in hot drinks before, into cold drinks. The combination of traditional brown sugar water and chewy tapioca balls is a memory shared by residents in Shilin and the students of Ming Chuan University, which is located in the area. Nowadays, every tea shop serving this drink gets the recipe from Mr. Wu.

Heart Tapioca

Heart Tapioca is an authentic snack of Yilan.

The first Heart Tapioca Shop was opened in May, 1991. Wei Shu Feng and Xu Qiong Wen, a married couple who were running a restaurant, decided to invest in tapioca balls since they both like douhua, or tofu pudding, and tapioca balls. They thought that if traditional tangyuan (balls made from sticky rice) could be stuffed with different ingredients, then tapioca balls can be as well. Therefore, they started to come up with different ideas of stuffed tapioca balls, more popularly known as Heart Tapioca.

After a lot of research, testing and failures, the widely accepted “Red Bean Heart Tapioca”, which can endure continuous and repeated boiling, came into being. Heart Tapiocas look just like normal tapioca balls , but they contain red beans or other fillings, and more flavors are appearing on the market. Luodong, a town in Yilan, was where tapioca balls with fillings first came out in Taiwan.

How to Cook

Boil some water in a pot and put in the defrosted Heart Tapiocas. Stir and cook the tapioca balls until they are transparent and no longer stick together (high fire for 4 minutes, but STOP before the tapioca balls float to the surface of the water). Turn off the stove, put on a lid and wait for 3 minutes.

Ways to Eat

After the tapioca balls are cooked, it is best to eat them hot and avoid putting them in the fridge after cooking them. When you eat them cold, only add ice right before eating to keep the tapioca balls from hardening.

Other Common Ways to Eat

Heart Tapioca with mung bean soup (cold): cook the mung bean soup in advance and make sure it is sweet enough. Add ice right before eating or put the mung bean soup in the fridge to cool before adding the Heart Tapiocas.

Heart Tapioca with red bean soup (hot): Heart Tapiocas and red bean soup with moderate sweetness is the best combination.

Heart Tapioca with longan and edible ‘snow fungus’: first, macerate the snow fungus and put it in boiling water along with the longan and a bit of sugar, and then add the defrosted Heart Tapiocas and cook for five minutes.

Desserts (Such as red bean soup, mung bean soup, douhua, grass jelly, pudding, tea, soup and soy milk desserts).

Ice products (traditional shaved ice, snow ice, smoothie and ice cream).