Bubble tea is a popular Taiwan tea made with black tea, milk, sugar and tapioca pearls, or boba, it can be served hot or chilled. There are different varieties of bubble tea with a wide range of flavors. Flavors may be added in form of powder, pulp, or syrup to oolong, black tea. You can add fruit flavors like strawberry or honeydew even taro to your tea. However, the most common ones are black pearls milk tea, and green pearl milk tea.
A lot of people use different milk in their bubble tea, you could come across condensed milk, skim milk, whole milk. powdered milk, almond milk, soy milk, coconut milk in some bubble teas, this is totally based on one’s preference
Bubble tea can be made with whole milk, skimmed milk, or any kind of milk at all, you may even prefer a non-dairy version and stick to almond milk, coconut milk, or soymilk depending on your choice. A very simple sweetener like sugar or syrup can be used, however, many people prefer to sweeten their bubble tea with honey or maple syrup; this is totally dependent on one’s preference too.
You can easily make your own tapioca pearls at home once you have tapioca flour if you don’t like store-bought pearls. But if you feel store-bought is an option, you can order it from amazon or any Asian supermarkets near you.
I have also made a video on how to make bubble tea, you can watch it for more explanation:
Table of Contents
What type of tea to use for bubble tea?
Basically, most people love to use black tea or jasmine tea for making boba tea because of their strong flavor. If you can’t get any of these, make sure to use any tea that has a robust flavor. This will help retain the real flavor of the tea even when milk, ice, and other ingredients have been added.
When you want to make your tea, it is best to assemble every ingredient in one place. This will help you not to run around trying to gather ingredients when the water has already boiled. You may want to make the tea ahead of time and store in a teapot or pitcher to make, it makes it very easy to reach when needed.
Bubble tea ingredients
- 1 black tea bag
- 1/3 cup tapioca pearls
- 2- 3 tablespoons sugar or syrup
- 1 1/2 cup of clean water
- 1/4 cup whole milk
- Some ice cubes
How to make bubble tea at home
- Add 1 and 1/2 cups of water to a saucepan and bring to a boil.
- Add tea bag or 2 tablespoons loose leaves black tea to the water and leave to steep for 5 minutes.
- Once the tea has fully infused, take the pot off from the stove, pour into a pitcher, and set aside
- In a serving glass, add some tapioca pearls, pour in the tea you have infused.
- Add in your whole milk and sweetener just enough to taste and stir to incorporate
- You can choose to top your tea with some ices cubes if you want.
- Your bubble tea is ready to serve. Enjoy!
Note: The above bubble tea recipe was made for one serving, however, you can increase the number of ingredients if you are making it for more people. You can as well steep a large quantity of tea and refrigerate until it is needed. In this case, you don’t have to add milk, tapioca pearls, and other ingredients yet, you can do so when you are ready to make some bubble tea.