How I make bubble tea at home

Hello tea drunkers! 👋

Like us, many of our readers are bubble tea enthusiasts. The problem we all face is that it is generally very expensive in western countries. Our solution: make it yourself! 🫵

That is why today I'd like to share with you how I make my bubble tea at home (the original black milk tea one). You'll see it's very simple!

All you need are the following ingredients:

• Tapioca pearls

You can find pre-made tapioca pearls in every asian supermarket, the major advantage is that they are very quick to cook. Be careful, however, once the package is opened, it does not keep very long.

If you want to be 100% DIY you can also make it from scratch with tapioca flour.

• Milk Tea

For the milk tea you have 2 solutions. The first one is to infuse the tea of your choice and then add to it some milk. I will recommend black tea as the original bubble tea but it is also very good with green tea. For the milk, you also have the option to use vegetal milk (oat, rice, almond...).

The second solution is to directly buy milk tea powder. On the picture you can see 2 examples of individual bag of milk tea powder that I bought at the asian supermarket. This is a quicker solution but also often better in taste as it is difficult to get the authentic taste of bubble tea by making it yourself.

• Sweetener

You'll need a sweetener to add flavour to it all. The most common is brown sugar. I personally bought it in a bulk shop so as not to buy more than necessary. You can also use honey or sweetened condensed milk.

Preparation steps:

1. Start by putting some water in a pot (about 10 cups of water for 1 cup of tapioca), then boil it.

2. Once the water is boiling, add the tapioca. I advise you to follow the instructions behind the packet, the cooking time is not the same depending on the brand. In general, wait for the pearls to rise to the surface (photo below) before lowering the heat to medium.

3. Once the tapioca has turned dark brown/black, it is ready! It's time to remove them from the water.

4. To make the sweetener, I just mixed brown sugar with boiling water. I then obtained a syrup which I mixed with the tapioca pearls.

5. Infuse your milk tea.

6. Wait a few minutes and then mix the tapioca pearls with the syrup in the milk tea.

Et voila, you are ready to enjoy your bubble tea! You can invest in reusable bubble tea straws in metal or bamboo to reuse them over and over again.

You can also change the tea base and the topping! You can also find fruit pearls and jellies.

Well I'm off to drink my tea now ☺️

Stay tuned for more teaps!