Making our own tapioca green tea!

Tapioca has been taking over Japan recently. It started from the introduction of Taiwanese bubble tea shops into the country (mostly in Tokyo), and now many local coffee shops, restaurants and other food providers alike are on the ball too (or balls, rather)!

One problem I have with these delicious drinks would be the price. They are often 500 yen a cup for the small and standard one, and adding more toppings or having a fancier drink makes it more expensive! So we decided to make it at home.

Instead of milk tea, we also wanted to go with green tea. Green tea based tapioca drinks are quite popular overseas, but they are not really available here in Japan. I guess that green tea is meant to be enjoyed straight in Japan, so mixing and sweetening it is not that acceptable here (yet). But the green tea based drinks are awesome, so we went with that!

We used the Shizuoka green tea we had stocked at home. The strong flavor from Shizuoka green tea pops really well and it contrasts with the tapioca well, especially if the tapioca are sweetened beforehand. The aftertaste is also more refreshing than milk tea and other variations of milk-based drinks, so I prefer having my tapioca with green tea.

At the same time, the color of the Shizuoka tea tends to be darker, so rather than the brown uncooked tapioca, we purchased the rainbow color tapioca to make it more attractive overall. The bag was about 250 yen, and I can easier make 4-6 servings with it.

With the tea and uncooked tapioca prepared, we gave it a try!

We used a recipe we found online that had us cook the tapioca for 20 minutes on high heat with a cover on. The dried tapioca started to look more transparent as we cooked them.

Then, we steeped them for another 20 minutes to let the heat and water go through the tapioca before draining them.

Next, and apparently a very important step, we soaked the tapioca into a brown sugar syrup that I had prepared beforehand (which was just mixing the brown sugar with hot water). This steps is essential to make the tapioca sweet, and I think it makes the overall drink better when we are pairing them with strong Shizuoka green tea.

Finally, instead of sugar syrup, we added honey to sweeten the drink up and put a few cubes of ice.

And it is finished!

The green tea goes excellent with the tapioca. Making this at home saves us money (and the need to travel and line up), but more importantly, it gave us the option for green tea based tapioca drinks that is yet to be popular in Japan. Give it a try!

This post is supported by Shizuoka Green Tea Guide, one of City-Cost's Supporters helping City-Cost bloggers to enjoy life in Japan and engage in new experiences.