Beverages Chinese

Homemade Bubble Tea

Sweet black tea and milk are poured over cooked tapioca pearls for a simple homemade bubble tea that requires one extra-wide straw and a willingness to chew your beverage.

Homemade Bubble Tea

What It Is

Sweet black tea and milk are poured over cooked tapioca pearls for a simple homemade bubble tea that requires one extra-wide straw and a willingness to chew your beverage.

Origin

This is my chinese-leaning version, built around the ingredients and method that give the recipe its character.

Fun Fact

The 'bubble' in bubble tea originally referred to the foamy bubbles created by shaking the tea, not the tapioca pearls.

Prep
10 min
Cook
20 min
Total
30 min
Servings
2 glass
(portion sizes are a suggestion, not a law)
Difficulty
easy
Gluten-Free Nut-Free
Diet
Vegetarian, Gluten-Free, Nut-Free
Away Mission
35 min walk
(roughly one away mission's worth of running from something that wants you dead)
#beverages #chinese #homemade-bubble-tea #spoon-and-scribble

Ingredients

  • 2 cups water
  • 5 tsp sugar, divided
  • ⅓ cup pearl tapioca
  • 1 cup brewed black tea
  • 2 tbsp milk
  • ½ cup ice

Steps

  1. Boil water, dissolve 1 tsp sugar and cook tapioca pearls for about 20 minutes. Drain, rinse and chill 15 minutes.
  2. Combine tea, milk and remaining sugar with ice and shake well.
  3. Place tapioca in the bottom of a tall glass and strain the tea mixture over it.

You Might Also Like

Warp Core Breach Warp Core Breach Beverages · American Borg Queen’s Assimilator Borg Queen’s Assimilator Beverages · American Maui Mai Tai Maui Mai Tai Beverages · American

Notes

Taste before the final adjustment. A recipe should guide dinner, not bully it. If it needs a little more acid, sweetness, salt or heat, make the change in small steps instead of launching the whole spice rack into orbit.

Nutrition Facts
Per 1 glass
Calories 160
Burning this off: several minutes of aggressively pretending to enjoy a work Zoom call.
% Daily Value*
Fat 0.0 g 0%
Saturated + Trans 0 g 0%
Cholesterol 0 mg
Sodium 20 mg 1%
Carbohydrate 39.0 g
Fibre 0.0 g 0%
Sugars 12.0 g 12%
Protein 0.5 g
Potassium 100 mg 2%
Calcium 25 mg 2%
Iron 0.6 mg 3%
*5% or less is a little, 15% or more is a lot. Sodium levels calculated in a country with universal healthcare — and it's free, so don't worry about it too much.
A genuinely respectable nutrition profile. No red flags here — go ahead and feel a little smug about it.

Substitutions

Use equivalent ingredients where needed for allergies or availability, but keep the main sweet/sour/salty/spicy balance intact. This is cooking, not a hostage negotiation.

Storage

Keep covered and chilled. Fresh-fruit or dairy drinks are best used within 1–2 days; fizzy drinks are happiest served the same day before the bubbles file for retirement.

Freezing

Freeze still fruit bases or concentrates if useful, but add carbonation after thawing. Dairy-heavy drinks are better made fresh.