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I have made puddings and pies from instant tapioca before, and I like them a lot.

I would like to try to recreate those recipes with tapioca pearls. How is cooking with pearls different from cooking with instant tapioca?

I'm not looking for specific recipes, but general guidelines:

  • do I rinse pearls before using them?
  • do I need to soak the pearls?
  • how much time do I need to add to cooking/baking?
  • do they go bad? What is shelf life of tapioca pearls?
  • any other details to consider when replacing instant tapioca with pearls in a recipe?
eternal_student
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  • Welcome to SA! I'll be interested in the answers to your questions, because we haven't gotten that particular substitution to work. – FuzzyChef Dec 15 '20 at 22:07
  • I looked at tapioca pudding recipes, and they recommend anywhere from half an hour to three hours of cook time, depending largely on how long your brand of tapioca takes to cook. Three hours is obviously too long to cook a pie, but tapioca that will cook in half an hour in pudding could work for a pie. I would suggest getting tapioca that has cooking instructions on the box that say you can cook it in less than an hour. Different brands also recommend different soaking times, ranging from not at all to overnight. Pre-soak if the package recommends, don't pre-soak if it doesn't. – csk Dec 16 '20 at 06:21
  • That's assuming you were going to use the small size of tapioca pearl that is normally used for tapioca pudding. If you were thinking of using large tapioca pearls or "boba," the kind used for making bubble tea, I have no idea. But I would use the cooking instructions on the package as a guide to whether the tapioca might possibly get fully cooked in the length of time you bake a pie. – csk Dec 16 '20 at 06:23
  • Although now that I'm thinking of it, the tapioca pudding cooking times are based on simmering the whole time. The inside of a pie won't be anywhere near that hot for most of the cook time. So you might need to pre-cook the tapioca at least partially. – csk Dec 16 '20 at 06:24

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