Thanks to the bubble tea craze that has caught on globally in the past few years, most of us can get our hands on the addictive drink easily. However, a Japanese college student decided to put in the hard work and made bubble tea completely from scratch – she even harvested her own cassava plant to make tapioca pearls.
Image credit: @teruterurururu_
A Japanese college student, who originally lived in Tokyo in her high school years but moved to Ibaraki Prefecture for university, shared her journey of making bubble tea from the ground up, literally.
In her tweet, user @teruterurururu_ proudly showed off her achievement after living in Ibaraki Prefecture for 3 years.
Image credit: @teruterurururu_
Instead of buying commercially available tapioca starch, the main ingredient used to make the chewy orbs in boba, the student opted to grow cassava plants in order to make said starch from the roots.
Image credit: @teruterurururu_
Making homemade tapioca is already a tedious and repetitive process, but add raw cassava plants to the equation and you have a whole new challenge. To end up with tapioca starch, you’d first have to peel off the outer skin of the cassava roots, rinse with cool water several times, and cut them into small chunks.
Once the roots are prepped, pop them into a blender with some water and blitz them until you get a smooth consistency. Pour the mixture into a bowl and let it sit for a while – the white starch will settle to the bottom and you can discard the liquid on top.
Image credit: @teruterurururu_
Scrape the remaining white residue onto a baking tray or any container with a wide surface area, before letting it dry out over a few days.
Image credit: @teruterurururu_
Once dried to a powdered form, the tapioca starch is ready to be made into dainty blobs of pearls and added to your milk tea.
Store-bought alternatives may be more convenient, but there’s nothing more satisfying than the feeling of seeing something through from start to finish, even if it takes a little more work. If you like to see more content on root vegetables, don’t forget to give user @teruterurururu_ a follow.
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Cover image adapted from: @teruterurururu_, @teruterurururu_ and @teruterurururu_
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