Tapioca Crepes

Brazilian food, photo created by freepik - www.freepik.com

Tapiocas Crepes, or just Tapiocas as we call them, are one of the most famous street foods in Brazil. In the North and Northeast they are also called Beiju, and in 2006 Tapioca was even considered a cultural heritage. Tapioca was used by the natives as an alternative for wheat. It’s super easy to prepare and you can basically fill it with whatever you want. A lot of Brazilians eat tapioca instead of bread.

It’s not necessarily a Main dish, you can have them as a snack too, although depending on the filling, it could make you full for the rest of the day. But the beauty of it is that you can just create whatever you want - with whatever you have on your fridge.

You basically have two ways to prepare Tapiocas. The first, and the easiest way, you buy the flour already hydrated (we call it Goma pronta), and it’s ready for use. Again, in Germany you can find this in big supermarkets with international areas, specialized latin shops or even in Amazon.

The other way is to buy the Tapioca Starch and hydrate it yourself. In this post I'll explain how to do it this way.

Ingredients

For the tapioca crepe:

• 1 cup of Tapioca starch

• 1/2 cup water

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

For the filling (suggestion):

• Butter

• Emmental Cheese

• Ham

Instructions

1. Mix the tapioca starch with the water gradually, just a little bit of water at a time, stirring with your fingers as you go. The mixture will form clumps.

2. Keep stirring and adding water until the entire mixture has form ed medium-to-small clumps. If your mixture is too moist, add a little more starch until you find a good balance, it should be more dry.

3. Pass the mixture through a sieve. Then mix the salt in the tapioca.

4. After that you heat a pan over medium heat - nonstick is better. Then you evenly sprinkle the sifted starch into a thin layer until all the pan is covered. Using the back of a spoon, even out the crepe and allow it to cook for about 30 seconds, or until the crepe slides easily in the pan.

5. Spread the butter over the crepe and then place one slice of cheese and one slice of ham on top of it. Wait 15 seconds then with a spatula fold the crepe.

6. You can then turn over the other side for a few seconds. And that’s it!

You can also make them sweet. I love to put bananas and doce de leite or chocolate. You can go crazy here!

Bom Apetite!