(Author Cem Bakis)
Who doesn’t love tea? Well in this article we’re talking about Bubble Tea!
If you follow food and drink trends from around the world, you may have heard of bubble tea. This sweet, cold beverage originates in Taiwan. However, it has quickly become an internationally popular drink that people from all countries enjoy.
Bubble tea delivers a totally different taste experience and it’s both simple and complex at the same time. It’s more of a street-food drink and lacks the tradition of something like the Japanese tea ceremony, but it’s a great newer way to enjoy a beverage that’s stood the test of time.
If bubble tea intrigues you and you want to find out more about what goes into it and why people love it, this is for you!
Bubble Tea: What Is It?
Bubble tea is a cold, sweet, flavored tea beverage with soft tapioca pearls at the bottom. When you eat the tapioca pearls, they burst with juicy sweetness, creating a multi-faceted sensory experience.
Bubble tea is called by many names, including boba, boba tea, pearl milk tea, and bubble milk tea. Boba is the slang word for breasts in Chinese and it refers to the breast-like appearance of the round tapioca balls that bob about in the drink.
This fun and delicious beverage is typically served with a wide jumbo straw, which makes it easier to sip the boba pearls up. This adds to bubble tea’s unique visual and functional appeal as it immediately looks different to your average cold beverage.
You can find bubble tea in a broad variety of different flavors and infusions, including:
● Milk tea – Traditional herbal teas like Ceylon or green tea are mixed with a milk of choice for a cold, creamy, and sweet tea beverage.
● Flavored tea – This kind of boba features the same herbal tea such as Ceylon, green tea, or jasmine but does not include milk. This makes it more hydrating and not as rich.
● Juice – Bubble tea doesn’t always include tea. Many people like to drink it with fresh, delicious juice, such as mango, passion fruit, or berries.
The pearls at the bottom of bubble tea can also vary in flavor. Some popular options include mango, green tea, and brown sugar. However, they’re all made with the same tapioca-based recipe.
In its country of origin, Taiwan, plain Ceylon milk tea with brown sugar pearls is the most popular. This traditional variation of bubble tea is called Chun Shui Tang. If you’re a big boba fan, you’ve got to try authentic Taiwanese Chun Shui Tang, there’s nothing else quite like it.
The Main Components Of Bubble Tea
Bubble tea consists of five main components: liquid, flavor, sweetener, creamer, and tapioca pearls.
To gain a better understanding of how this beverage gets made and what constitutes a complete bubble tea product, let’s take a look at those different components more closely.
1. Liquid - The liquid part of boba forms the basis of the hydrating, refreshing, and delicious beverage. Depending on who is ordering the bubble tea, this drink’s liquid base could be water, juice, tea, or milk. Using clean, filtered water is essential when making bubble tea, as any metallic or mineral taste could ruin the overall flavor. The juice should also be good quality and not a syrup or concentrate with an overly synthetic taste. One (or more) of these liquid varieties is responsible for holding together the bubble tea.
2. Flavor - Even though bubble tea is traditionally flavored with Taiwanese black tea and milk, there are dozens upon dozens of other flavors for you to try. Most of the time, these favors come in the form of a herbal tea infusion, flavored syrup, or flavored powder. These flavors are typically inspired by different fruits, such as kiwi, black sesame, pineapple, peach, strawberry, or mango. However, if you go to a proper Taiwanese bubble tea shop, the flavor options will be nearly endless, with many exotic flavors that you’d never have dreamt of.
3. Sweetener - Bubble tea is a classically sweet, almost dessert-like beverage. Some of the flavored powders used to give boba its flavor already have sweeteners mixed into them, but you can also make this drink sweet by using brown sugar, honey, or fructose (fruit sugar).
4. Creamer - It’s important to remember that bubble tea can come in three different forms—milk tea, flavored tea, or juice. Now, only one of those three options has milk, but this variety is so popular it is definitely worth covering in this post. Bubble tea can be made thick and creamy with the addition of a creamer powder or an actual milk product, including both animal and plant-based varieties such as cow’s milk, almond milk, and oat milk.
5. Tapioca Pearls - The tapioca pearls found in bubble tea are what give this drink its signature charm. As the name suggests, these soft little pearls are mainly tapioca flour—a fine natural gluten-free flour that becomes delicious and chewy when rolled into a dough and boiled. The other ingredients in a tapioca pearl are water and sugar. However, sometimes an additional flavor gets added for extra depth. The pearls get added to the tea raw or boiled for a sturdier composition. All in all, tapioca pearls add a fun texture, flavor, and visual appeal to bubble tea. They are chewy, sweet, and packed with flavor for a unique treat you won’t find at the bottom of any other drink.
How To Drink Bubble Tea
Bubble tea is easy to drink for all ages and can be enjoyed on its own, with other Asian-style dishes like ramen, or whatever more Western-style food you prefer. Simply pop your jumbo straw down the center of your drink and start sipping. Some tea shops offer long-handled spoons to collect the final pearls from the bottom of the cup when the tea is finished.
The History Of Bubble Tea
Bubble tea first originated in Taiwan in the 1980s. Taiwanese culture is already steeped in tea harvesting and drinking, so when this new drink first arrived on the market, its popularity spread like wildfire. Bubble tea is to Taiwan what soda or milkshakes are to the US.
A Tasty Tea For Everyone
Boba, bubble tea, pearl milk tea—whatever you prefer to call it, there’s no doubt this imaginative and refreshing dessert drink is a global favorite.
Made from five base elements of liquid, flavor, sweetener, creamer, and tapioca pearls, bubble tea is a multi-faceted beverage that people from all ages and cultural backgrounds can enjoy.
Thanks to Cem Bakis from Glacier Fresh for sharing this article!
Julia Esteve Boyd
The Etiquette Consultant