Tapioca

[aidensnd2]

Does anyone have any recommendations for storing tapioca after it has been cooked. I'm talking about just the pearls by themselves, unflavored. I used to make a coconut tapioca soup so for that I could just leave the tapioca in the soup for a couple of days in the fridge and it held fine. Now I'm making them to use unflavored and then flavoring will be poured over them tableside. I've tried storing them in simple syrup and they just get hard within a few hours. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

[pastrygirl]

Tapioca is like rice and other starches that undergo retrogradation (see McGee) aka get hard when chilled. I was playing with some big black 'boba' pearls recently and they seemed to get harder faster than smaller pearls, don't know why. But, same as rice, tapioca softens again when heated, so you could try either reheating your pearls to order in a basket in boiling water like the line cooks do for pasta, or you could re-heat a whole batch before service, leave it at room temperature, and hope the health dept doesn't stop in and have a problem.