This Tapioca Pearls recipe is such a beautiful, exotic dessert. This is a recipe from my mom – she used to serve this in the summer time to cool off. Usually it’s made with honeydew, but the cantaloupe was on sale, ripe and smelled so fresh!
Why This Tapioca Pearls Recipe Is So Good
- Super easy to make.
- One of my most searched for recipes!
- A wonderful mix of textures, very unique and delicious.
- A refreshing dessert – perfect for BBQ’s
Ingredients
- Water
- Sugar
- Small tapioca pearls
- Whole milk
- Full fat coconut milk
- Melon
How To Make This Tapioca Pearls Recipe – Step By Step
- In a medium sized pot, bring the water and sugar to a boil. When boiling, turn the heat to low and stir in the milk. When the mixture returns to a boil, turn off the heat and stir in the coconut milk.
- Make sure that you are not boiling the coconut milk (which would make it oily) Remove from heat, let cool to room temperature and chill in refrigerator for at least 2 hours.
- Soak tapioca pearls in cold water for 20 minutes. The pearls will expand and turn bright white. Drain. In a medium pot, add about a quart of water and bring to a boil. Turn off heat, add the drained tapioca pearls and stir constantly for 1 1/2 minutes.
- Immediately drain in fine mesh sieve and run cold water through the sieve to stop the tapioca pearls from cooking further. Combine with the coconut milk mixture and continue to chill in refrigerator. You can prepare everything above up to 3 days in advance.
- To serve, ladle the sweet coconut milk with tapioca into a bowl and add a big spoonful of diced, fresh melon.
What Are Tapioca Pearls
If you have never heard of tapioca pearls, it looks like small balls that are about the size of quinoa, but made from tapioca flour. It can be found in Asian stores, or online. Be aware that these are a lot smaller than the tapioca pearls used for bubble tea.
Tapioca pearls are first soaked in cold water for about 20 minutes, this helps to soften them.
Tapioca Pearls – So Popular!
Looking back through my blog stats, this is by far the most popular recipe searched. There aren’t a lot of Chinese cookbooks that feature this recipe, I wonder why?This isn’t a very well-known dessert in Asian American restaurants, but it can be found in dim-sum eateries in Hong Kong as a perfect ending to a meal.
A Refreshing Summer Dessert
We served this as dessert after our Korean BBQ feast. It was just the right dessert to enjoy to cool us down after all the smoky heat of BBQ.
This dessert is perfect for summer, it’s super fresh, not too sweet, and has a chewy texture thanks to the addition of tapioca pearls. The combination of coconut and melon is divine!
Top Tips For This Tapioca Pearls Recipe
- Make sure you don’t boil the coconut milk, as that will make it oily.
- Soak the tapioca pearls in water for at least 20 mins.
- You can prep this up to 3 days in advance.
- Perfect to serve on a hot summer’s day.
Check Out These Other Sweet Treats
- Negative Calorie Chocolate Cake
- Vietnamese Coffee Ice Cream Recipe
- Chocolate Cake S’mores Cookies
- Apple Cinnamon Bourekas
Have you tried this Tapioca Pearls recipe? Feel free to leave a star rating and I’d love to hear from you in the comments below!
Tapioca Pearls with Sweet Coconut & Melon
Ingredients
- 3 cups water
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 2/3 cup 1mm small dried tapioca pearls
- 1 cup whole milk
- 2 cups full fat coconut milk
- 2 cups 1/2 inch diced melon honeydew or cantaloupe
Instructions
- In a medium sized pot, bring the water and sugar to a boil. When boiling, turn the heat to low and stir in the milk. When the mixture returns to a boil, turn off the heat and stir in the coconut milk. Make sure that you are not boiling the coconut milk (which would make it oily) Remove from heat, let cool to room temperature and chill in refrigerator for at least 2 hours.
- Soak tapioca pearls in cold water for 20 minutes. The pearls will expand and turn bright white. Drain. In a medium pot, add about a quart of water and bring to a boil. Turn off heat, add the drained tapioca pearls and stir constantly for 1 1/2 minutes.
- Immediately drain in fine mesh sieve and run cold water through the sieve to stop the tapioca pearls from cooking further.
- Combine with the coconut milk mixture and continue to chill in refrigerator. You can prepare everything above up to 3 days in advance.
- To serve, ladle the sweet coconut milk with tapioca into a bowl and add a big spoonful of diced, fresh melon.
Did you try this recipe? Please leave a star rating in the recipe card below and leave a review in the comment section! I always appreciate your feedback and I know other readers do, too!
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This tastes amazing! Thank you for the wonderful recipe!
I had a delicious chilled coconut soup in a little town in Soon Norway. It had candied or glazed ginger pieces in the soup, delicious.
Do you have any recipes in mind for the ginger? It also had passion fruit in the soup. I called the restaurant to see if I could get the recipe, no luck!!
I love your recipe and look forward to experimenting with that and other suggestions.
Thank you, Kari
Thank you, thank you!! I have been looking for this recipe for 30 years – sooo excited! I can’t wait!
This is also fantastic with mango and watermelon.
Hi, I just recently came across your recipe and decided to try it out! I’m making this as a dessert for a dinner I am going to, so I was wondering how many servings does this recipe make?
try coconut water instead of milk or plain water
i made this today by following the recipe exactly but it is too runny ????? What is the right consistency for this dessert?
Thanks for your reply. I guess I had better get to town and order some. I also would like to try to make it at home. If you know how to make it I would love to have you share. I am going to experiment and try to duplicate it at home. Love your site.
Sounds so good I am going to try it. Also when I was a kid (long time ago) we
used to get what looked like tapioca squares. Looked like the tapioca was soaked, maybe then kneaded, put in a square pan and then steamed. It was chilled and slightly sweet and cut in squares. Do you know about this dessert?
yes! I love it – I usually order it at dim sum.
What would you recommend to make this dairy-free?
Just water sounds too lackluster, but more coconut milk might be too heavy. I had something similar to this recently, served with chopped strawberries and lilikoi (passion fruit) puree. Delicious.
One of our friends made this recipe for a gaming night and we loved it! I have access to a wonderful Chinese market with all sorts of tapioca, but I had a question on if the recipe could be made using “minute” tapioca, which is much more common in big chain grocery stores. I have some of this type leftover from other recipes and was curious if I could substitute it for the tapioca in this recipe. My gut is saying that it wouldn’t work as well, but I was curious if it was possible or if anyone had ever tried this substitution.
Hi, I am new to your blog and must say I am enjoying it a lot!
I love, love tapioca. I usually have it with litchi. It tastes gorgeous, and even though it has all that cream, it is a very refreshing dessert.Mmmmmmm…..
Thank you!
I made a huge batch of this for a book club after we read a book about China. The soup was delicious! The only thing I did wrong was not scoop the pearls off the bottom of the pot where they had gravitated so the servings were lacking in an abundance of the wonderful tapioca!
Fantastic recipe! had mine with jackfruit. the coconut milk you recommended was superb. only thing was that i over cooked the tapioca a little bit.. but the coconut milk breaks it up once altogether.
thanks so much for the recipe. definately comfort food!!
I’ve been looking for desserts that I can make with tapioca other than pudding! I love tapioca.
This sounds like it would be delicious with other fresh, summer fruit as well, like strawberries.
There was a Thai restaurant I always went to in Taiwan that served this, but with mango and papaya pieces instead of melon. I was looking for this recipe because I loved that dessert. Thanks!
Nice post, just found your site recently. I’ve made this before, but i use taro instead. Will try the reduced time in cooking the tapioca since I seem to overcook it. However, how do you tell if the pearls are cooked? Thanks
The color of the tapioca should be clear, not opaque. Also just take a spoonful and try it. ~jaden
Thank you so much for posting this! I was specifically looking for this recipe! Thre is a Chinese buffet we got o that has this and it is by far and away my favorite! How funny is it that I bought this brand of coconut milk at the Asian market before seeing your site! The only problem I have is that the bag of tapioca pearls I bought does not have any instructions to it!
thanks so much! i made it today and its perfect! except for the fact that i over boiled the pearls or did something wrong. 🙂
with small tapioca pearls, it’s easy to overcook. follow directions on the package! when in doubt, shave off 1 minute from cooking time – if still need more cooking, just let steep in hot water for a couple of minutes. ~jaden
There are other asian variations for this dessert but just as delicious!
Instead of the melons, you can add in bananas or jackfruit 🙂
I grew up with the bananas 😀 such a comfort dessert dish
Caroyln: Hey Carolyn,
oops – there were some missing line breaks in the recipe.
2 cups coconut milk (full fat) 3 cups water
1 1/2 cups sugar Fruit: honeydew or cantelope, diced small
should have been
2 cups coconut milk (full fat)
3 cups water
1 1/2 cups sugar
Fruit: honeydew or cantelope, diced small
Just fixed it!
thanks, jaden
I would love to try your tapioca in coconut cream but in the recipe you say to boil the water and suger and I don’t see any in the recipe. How much water and sugar do you start with?
I am going to try that!