a peek inside the fishbowl

Yesterday I wrote about recreating one of our favourite restaurant meals, specifically, a top-notch burger and fries. Today I’m focusing on something a little different: bubble tea. What is bubble tea? Well, it’s a sweet drink of Asian origin. We buy it whenever we’re visiting Somerset and when we go to the doctor’s.

Bubble tea is often fruit flavoured – melon, lychee, coconut, strawberry – but the big draw here is the chewy tapioca “pearls” on bottom of the glass. These are the “bubbles” in bubble tea.

Last time we were at T&T Supermarket I picked up the makings for bubble tea. The ingredients are pretty simple but I had to tinker with this recipe a little bit before posting it here. This is the formula which tasted closest to what you’d get at places like Bubblicity and other local bubble tea shops. We were all really happy with the outcome!

Andrea’s Homemade Bubble Tea Recipe

• 1 cup uncooked tapioca pearls (available in Asian markets) Note! One cup uncooked results in approximately 4 cups of cooked pearls.
• 1/2 cup cold green tea
• 1 1/2 cups cold 2% milk
• OPTION #1: powdered honeydew bubble tea powder (available in Asian markets, and it’s basically powdered milk, natural colouring, and sugar)
• OPTION #2: you can probably make this with fresh honeydew melon instead (very ripe and well-blended!) but I haven’t tried it this way yet. I bet that this version is healthier and it will have less sugar and fewer calories.

First, the pearls. I bought white ones. These are translucent when they’re cooked and taste exactly the same as the black ones we normally see in bubble tea.

Follow the directions on the package:

This particular brand had to be boiled for 20 minutes, left in the pot overnight and boiled a second time for 10 minutes the next day. Then they needed to be soaked a bit longer and rinsed. It seems onerous, but it was no biggie.

Aren’t they pretty?

Please, no comments about how much they look like tiny eyeballs ok?

The eyeballs pearls will keep in the fridge, covered, for about four days.

The rest is very easy. Combine the milk, the tea, and four or five heaping teaspoons of the powder in a blender. Whirl until frothy. Pour into a tall glass over 1/3 cup of the pearls.

This version won’t be as sweet as the ones you get in restaurants, but that’s ok by me. If you do want it sweeter, add a teaspoon of superfine sugar as you’re blending it up.

There you go! Your own bubble tea!

It’s too bad we didn’t have proper straws (pictured here and here) with which to hoover up the pearls. Oh well. We liked it anyway. :)