
Add ice if desired, pour tea into each glass, and finish with non-dairy milk. To assemble, strain and divide the cooked tapioca between 2 cups.Transfer to a bowl and cover with just enough water so it doesn’t dry out, and add 2 tablespoons of sweetener. Once tapioca pearls are cooked through, remove them from heat and strain.Once your desired tea strength is reached, allow chilling in the fridge until you’re ready to serve. Make this quite strong as you’ll be adding vegan milk later on. While this is cooking, set aside an additional 1 cup of hot water and allow your tea of choice to steep.You can also try one pearl to make sure it’s cooked through.

You’ll know when the tapioca is ready when it becomes a translucent black. Make sure you stir occasionally so the tapioca pearls don’t stick together. In a saucepan bring 3 cups of water to a boil, add dry tapioca pearls and continue to boil on low heat for about 5-8 min, or according to package directions.Lin likes to steep her tea until it has cooled completely, which can take 20 to 30 minutes.Making this vegan bubble tea recipe at home can sound really intimidating at first, but I promise after you make it the first time, you’ll realize just how easy it is. “A lot of tea guides will tell you to steep your tea for no more than four minutes just to prevent the tannin from being too strong,” she says. “I tend to steep my tea longer than what people would recommend,” Lin chuckles. Use very strong teaįor a beverage with a more pronounced and concentrated tea flavor, blogger Lisa Lin makes a stronger cup of tea by steeping for longer or using two tea bags instead of one. The syrup can be kept in the fridge for up to a month, so it’s worth making a big batch. “If you’re feeling ambitious,” Chau, Chen, and their co-author Richard Parks III write in The Boba Book, “we recommend making syrups out of black sugar, rock sugar, or even Japanese kuromitsu” to add another layer of flavor. Andrew Chau and Bin Chen, who founded the popular bubble-tea chain Boba Guys, recommend soaking the tapioca for at least 30 minutes (but no longer than four hours) and experimenting with different sugars. The swirls of caramel-like syrup create dramatic, Instagram-worthy stripes in boba beverages and ice cream bars, like those sold by Tiger Sugar, a chain renowned for its brown sugar bubble tea. Once the tapioca is cooked, Zhu drains the pearls and places them in a syrup bath made with dark brown sugar, which infuses the boba with a rich molasses-like flavor.

“Let the residual heat slowly steam them.” Make your simple syrup with brown sugar “The key is to not overcook it,” she advises. When raw, the pearls have a firm texture and a coating of tapioca starch, but fully cooked pearls should be soft, chewy, and translucent. She then takes the pot off the heat and allows the pearls to steam, covered, for another 20 minutes. Zhu prepares tapioca pearls by boiling them for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring frequently to prevent sticking, until they start to become semi-transparent. $22 at Amazon Don’t overcook your tapioca “If you’re a novice boba drinker you probably can’t tell the difference, but for a lot of Asian Americans who have been drinking this for many years, it’s like night and day.” Great boba should be soft but still have a bouncy, chewy, QQ resistance. “I think the quality of the pearls really matters,” Wei tells me.
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Epi contributor Clarissa Wei, author of the forthcoming book Made in Taiwan, agrees with Zhu. Though quick-cooking and instant pearls will work in a pinch, they aren’t as chewy as regular tapioca pearls and are easily overcooked. Maggie Zhu, the blogger behind “ Omnivore’s Cookbook,” emphasizes that it’s important to look for regular tapioca pearls.
#Bubble tea recipes how to
To learn how to make the very best bubble tea at home, I asked a few experts for their tips and tricks. To streamline the process for myself, I like to brew a big batch of tea and make my simple syrup at the beginning of the week, so all that’s left to do is cook the tapioca pearls when I want a boba beverage.
